Inspectors found rotten and weevil-infested grain, along with evidence that large stocks were replaced with old or inferior grades.

Corruption under the previous government’s rice-pledging scheme was one of the main reasons for the May 22 coup d’etat.

The chairman of a sub-committee reviewing the inventory, ML Panadda Diskul, said a large quantity of rice was discovered to be missing in just the first two days of the inspection, the Bangkok Post reported.

He said military and police teams will visit about 1800 warehouses nationwide to inspect registered stocks of 10 million tons.

Panadda said some rice sacks bore code numbers that did not match documents provided by the warehouse owners, raising suspicions that pledged rice had been replaced with old or inferior rice bought from mills at lower prices.