This weekend I took some time out from watching films to attend to condominium issues.  Saturday morning there was a homeowner’s association meeting at Raintree Villa.  Wanting to do our civic duty, Tawn and I showed up for this meeting.  We even had an item we wanted on the agenda: a request to consider installing bicycle parking racks in the car park.

What we didn’t realize was that this meeting had been called to address one particular point of business: the embezzlement of about one million baht (about US$31,500 at the ever-worsening exchange rates) over the past year by the complex’s manager.

Scandal!  Below, Tawn and I wait for the meeting to start.  The plastic chairs say “Wat Pasi Ekkamai” on the back and were borrowed from the temple near Tawn’s parents’ house.  Interestingly, “pasi” means “tax” or “duty” so I’m curious whether the temple was built from taxes.  Interesting name.  Can’t quite imagine the First Church of the Value Added Tax on some street corner. 

The property management company, Plus Properties, was there to report on the investigation and to request help from the home owners in gathering further evidence.  It seems that the manager had not always been issuing receipts for water payments and and was using fake receipts for home owner association payments. 

There was a lot of debate amongst meeting participants about Plus Properties’ responsibility for this embezzlement because it seems that the on-site manager had had little oversight and that few checks existed to balance her actions.  Originally there had been two on-site managers, each of whom checked and balanced the other.  But due to cost-cutting, one of the positions was eliminated.  From what I gather, the home owner association’s board had agreed to that change.

Anyhow, reviewing the data that was provided, our unit does not have any outstanding balances and it appears that the former owner was diligent about collecting receipts for her payments.  Good news.