• 
• 

Published on September 5, 2007

"We kept quiet for a period and let every concerned agency strike us one-sided. But now we're ready to fight against all unfair allegations," managing director Apichat Chansakulporn said.

The company is preparing documents to sue both its employees and the ministry's officials for colluding in the alleged rice embezzlement, he said.

The company has already taken legal action against the Commerce Ministry's Foreign Trade Department and Public Warehouse Organisation (PWO) to restore its reputation.

The company will issue a series of statements explaining all accusations by the ministry, he said.

The first statement targeted the dispute over the 30,000 tonnes of rice.

It suggested that the department and PWO investigate their officials over whether all the 45,000 tonnes under the contract between the company and the department and PWO had been transported to the company's warehouse for quality improvement.

It said the warehouse's full capacity was 13,332 tonnes of rice. But the department said it delivered

45,000 tonnes to the company.

Then the department claimed that 30,000 tonnes went missing.

Apichat noted that since it was a government contract, the department had sent officials during the day to watch over the whole process, from rice quality improvement to shipment.

If the company wanted to move out the stock, it would have to use 2,000 trucks and do it only at night, he said.

"The department learned that rice had been carried out of the warehouse for a month. Why did the government neglect to investigate this unusual practice?" he asked.

The company's evidence shows that the department delivered rice to the warehouse below the specified amount, he said.

"The government should turn back to check its operations rather than blame us," he said.

The Foreign Trade Department reaffirmed that the government would fulfil its contracts with buying countries, despite the vanishing inventory.

Apiradi Tantraporn, director-general of the department, said the government was ready to ship 20,380 tonnes of rice to Iran and 10,100 tonnes to Indonesia under the contract.

She said the government had already allocated rice from the government's stockpile to other quality-improvement companies. The government will ship 6,870 tonnes of rice to Iran today.

The remaining amount will be gradually delivered until the end of the contract in November.

The company sent a lawyer to the department on Monday to negotiate the embezzlement case. However, the department could not change anything, as the matter was now in the hands of police, but would further file lawsuits against this firm.

"Although the government didn't have a regulation to blacklist rice exporters, this firm has lost the faith of the government and will be unable to receive any project from the government," she said.

 Achara Pongvuthitham,

 Petchanet Pratruangkrai

 The Nation