DSI accuses schools of embezzling student loans - The Nation

DSI accuses schools of embezzling student loans

Piyanuch Thamnukasetchai
The Nation February 21, 2012 1:00 am


The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) is preparing to take action against higher-education institutions and staff caught embezzling student loans.

"I will raise the issue at the upcoming meeting of the special case committee," Tharit Pengdit, director-general of the DSI, said yesterday.

The committee would be asked to assign corruption cases related to the Student Loan Fund (SLF) and the Income Contingent Loan (ICL) programmes to the DSI because they caused damage to the public sector, hurt youth's chances for an education, and involved the state budget, he said.

Each year, the government appropriates more than Bt4 billion for the SLF and ICL.

An initial inquiry suggests that 32 state and private colleges as well as universities or their staff might have siphoned money from the loan schemes in 2006 and 2007. "The administrators of these institutions were found encouraging high school students to enrol at their campuses and sign loan applications. Many students later discovered that they owe money to the SLF or ICL even though they have not really furthered their studies at the undergraduate level," Tharit said.

Hundreds of students have refused to repay loans they said they did not really use. Their debts range from Bt80,000-Bt120,000 each. Last year, a local leader in Narathiwat helped students lodge a complaint against a higher-education institution operating in the Central region after it used the students' paperwork to seek loans from the SLF programme.

SLF manager Dr Thada Martin said he did not think corruption involving the ICL or SLF was possible. "Students have to sign loan applications on a yearly basis for the loan money to go to the higher-educational institutions," he said, "The loan money does not go to those institutes automatically."