Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing nominees yet again here in Thailand. For those who are unaware, nominees are actually illegal in a corporate context, in the context of Corporate Law here in Thailand. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, article is titled: "Grey" businesses facing crackdown. I urge those who are watching this video go read that article in detail because there is a lot more information in there. I am quoting an excerpt here, I'm going to do my own little analysis but I really urge those watching the video check out the article. Quoting directly: "The Commerce Ministry is investigating 200 companies suspected of acting as nominees for foreign businesses in a move to curb the so-called "grey" market, with a particular focus on restaurants and tourism related business." Quoting further: "The nominee issues have re-emerged and are increasing now that the country's tourism sector has bounced back." 

So interesting that this is even going on but it's something to really seriously understand. Foreign Nationals come over here to Thailand looking to do business and they operate with a lot of presumptions. Big ones we have talked about and I will probably make some further videos on this but big presumptions I have talked about in the past is for example and this is almost paradigm level or almost philosophical level, so I understand this one where foreigners oftentimes especially those from Common Law jurisdictions presume Thailand works like a Common Law jurisdiction and it doesn't, it has a totally different set of laws. That is not so much what we are talking about here. I think a lot of foreign nationals oftentimes will dig into legality and realize nominees are illegal but they kind of say "oh it's no big deal!" They just sort of brush it off and it is this kind of attitude that leads to real problems because when you brush off something as important as illegality of nominees for example, you can find yourself in a really nettlesome corporate legal situation that you may not be able to get out of. It may actually have criminal implications here in Thailand and being before a Thai Criminal Court or the possibility of going into a Thai Detention Center is not a place you want to find yourself. So understand, nominees are illegal in Thailand and we especially see this issue unfortunately in matters involving corporations which are primarily set up as a pretext, arguably a pretense for owning land in Thailand and the fact is those nominees are illegal, as is trying to own land in Thailand as a foreigner. 

So again, these are things to keep in mind when looking to do business here because understanding that nominees are illegal and then understanding what a nominee is and as we have discussed another videos, some people also make presumptions as to what a nominee actually is, the legal definition of that. I am not going to drill into that in this video but we have done it already but long story short, be aware of this because if you are looking to do business in Thailand it is something that can lead you down the wrong path if you're not aware of it.