BANGKOK, Sept 22: Thailand’s military coup leaders got down to business on Friday, forming a panel to probe alleged corruption under ousted billionaire leader Thaksin Shinawatra and sacking a powerful police board he used to lead.

They were working on forming a nine-person panel to probe Thaksin, his relatives and political colleagues, judges invited onto the panel said on Friday.

The coup leaders also announced they had sacked the national police board which Thaksin, himself a former police colonel, used to chair, and appointed a new board to be headed by the national police chief, who took part in the coup.

In the meantime, the search for a new prime minister was narrowing, Colonel Acra Tiprote, of the Council of Democratic Reform under the Constitutional Monarchy, told Reuters.

“They are very close to getting the name of the new prime minister and it is likely to be forwarded to His Majesty for an approval in the next one or two days,” he said.

The military chiefs, formally installed as the interim government on Friday, maintained from the first that they did not want to stay in power.

They pledged to select a prime minister within two weeks with a mandate to form a government and start drawing up a new constitution to allow elections in a year.

The new anti-corruption panel, modelled on a commission under Thaksin that was fired after giving itself illegal pay rises and never replaced, would not target Thaksin alone, the judges said.

The auditor-general has already speeded up existing probes, including an investigation into whether Thaksin’s family legitimately avoided paying tax on its $1.9 billion sale of the firm he founded.—Reuters