BANGKOK (AP) — A construction magnate and more than a dozen other people surrendered to police Friday on criminal negligence charges for the collapse of a Bangkok high-rise during a March 28 earthquake.
Premchai Karnasuta, the president of Italian-Thai Development Co, the main Thai contractor for the building project, and 16 other people were charged with the felony of professional negligence causing death, Bangkok deputy police chief Noppasin Poonsawat said.
Nintety-two people were confirmed dead in the rubble of the building that had been under construction and a small number of other people remain unaccounted for. The building, which was to become a new State Audit Office, was the only one in Thailand to collapse in the earthquake that was centered in neighboring Myanmar.