Bangkok, 7 January 2022 – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a criminal complaint with the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) against a current executive and three former directors and executives of Nation Multimedia Group Public Company Limited (NMG) for jointly committing a fraud and failing to perform duties responsibly, carefully and honestly, which caused damage to the company. In addition, they colluded to act or consented to provision of false statements or omission of material or related statements from the company’s account or documents to deceive any persons.
According to the findings of the SEC’s investigation, the four persons, namely (1) Miss Duangkamol Chotana, (2) Miss Nutwara Saengwarin, (3) Mr. Supoth Piansiri, and (4) Mr. Sirichai Chananam – at the time of the misconduct from 2015 to 2017 holding the positions of director and executive of NMG – made a joint decision to approve, order and arrange a recording of false advertising income in the financial statements of NMG.
The evidence in this case has revealed that the NMG’s financial statements for the year 2015 to 2017 showed manipulated income and unrealized advertising income, which were in fact nonexistent and could not be collected from the company’s clients. The four persons shared the roles in this regard to order a record of false income. In addition, the criteria for advertising sales were revised to facilitate the Sales Department’s recording of fake advertising bookings in the advertising sale system. The four persons then instructed the Accounting Department to record such fake advertising bookings as income and unrealized income at the amount of 691 million baht. Such accounting manipulation was detected in 2018. NMG rectified its financial statements and disclosed the rectified financial statements via the Electronic Information Transmission System of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) in August 2018.
The misconduct of the four current and former executives and directors* is liable to collusion to commit a fraud and failure to perform duties with responsibility, discretion and integrity. NMG subsequently suffered damage from their violation or failure to perform duties. Additionally, the four persons colluded to act or consented to the recording of the false statements or the omission of material or related statements from the account or documents of NMG to deceive any persons in contravention of Paragraph 2 of Section 281/2 in conjunction with Section 89/7 and Section 312 of the Securities and Exchange Act B.E. 2535(1992), in conjunction with Section 83 of the Penal Code. The SEC has therefore filed the criminal complaint against the four persons with the DSI for further legal proceedings.
Since the four persons are named in the criminal complaint, they are liable to possess untrustworthy characteristics of company directors and executives from the date of being named throughout the period of the criminal complaint and legal action.**
In any case, filing the criminal complaint is merely the commencement of the criminal procedure whereby the inquiry official will perform an investigation before recommending the case to the public attorney who has authority for prosecution. The power to adjudicate whether any person is guilty or not is, however, vested on the court of justice.
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Remarks:
* Persons in (1), (3) and (4) have resigned from NMG.
** Notification of the Securities and Exchange Commission No. Kor Jor. 3/2560 Re: Determination of the Untrustworthy Characteristics of Company Directors and Executives, dated 23 January 2017.