Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a crackdown of Thai companies owning land for foreigners. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from The Phuket News, that is thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: DSI raids Phuket accountants over B440mn in nominee companies. Quoting directly: "The Department of Special Investigation" (bear in mind, this is DSI, this is the Thai equivalent of like the FBI over here. This is National Police and beyond even it is Special Investigations. And again, I think it's really interesting, foreigners have a tendency out here to become very complacent and very nonchalant, very apathetic if you will quite honestly about Thai Law. I get this all the time where people will contact us, we'll be talking about things either in consultation or we will be setting things up and they'll say: "well so and so did it like this and this is no problem for them". Yeah it is not a problem for them until it isn't and then it is a problem for them and what you want is to have proper legal advice to set things up in such a way that you don't have DSI raiding your office or the office of your accountant and presumably confiscating your documentation and leaving your entire business and possibly your assets in that business up in the air, basically in limbo. That's not what you want obviously. But again, foreigners here get very complacent and sort of just kind of think that everything is going to be all right; again I get accused of being a scaremonger all the time associated with this stuff; that is not my purpose. it is not even true because as noted in this article and we will get to it here in a minute, Thai Law enforcement really does care about these things and when they come down, they come down like a hammer on it. It's not a good thing. Quoting directly: "The Department of Special Investigation has raided a legal accounting firm based in Chalong that is now under investigation for its involvement in facilitating nearly 70 foreigners illegally operating companies with holdings worth an estimated total of Bt440 million. He said the practice of using nominee shareholders was illegal under the Foreign Business Act and brought "much economic harm to the country". He being DSI Director, General Police Major Suriya Singhakamol. Quoting further: "In total, 44 real estate companies" (note real estate there) "eight tourism companies and 14 other service companies were under investigation, Major Suriya confirmed." Quoting further: "This type of offense is widespread in Phuket, Chiang Mai and tourist areas in the East and is an area of high value. Foreigners have come to rely on this method of acquiring or possessing high value land which causes the state to lose a lot of revenue due to land trading through a nominee company, not normal trading," Major Suriya said."

So again, this is not some detail, this is not some afterthought, this is not something to just dismiss, this is policy. This is policy in Thailand. Foreigners are not supposed to be trading, they are not supposed to be owning Thai land. And again foreigners show up all the time and just dismiss this out of hand and again, I am frustrated on a certain level as a Thai because it's not right for the country. He is right, it does cause to quote: "much economic harm to the country." Again Thailand has these provisions because it is protectionism; they do want to protect the real estate in their country, their land, Thai land, our Land if you will. 

So there's that element but even deeper than that is I talk to foreigners all the time. I've been a foreigner here, I'm naturalized, I have the fervour of the converted, I will grant but when you talk to foreigners, "oh, nobody cares, everybody does it, dah, dah, dah" -  people do care, it's in the law, it's the policy. This isn't something to just brush off and again I get accused of being a scaremonger and all that stuff, that's not my purpose. My purpose is to warn so that people can stay within the bounds of the Law so they don't end up in this kind of problem. I'm sure there were people that got into this in good faith because they read online that this was okay and everything's hunky dory, and as I have said in other videos, there may be limited circumstances where this type of practice, you've got a small shop house kind of set up where it's a husband/wife team but they do it through a company and the husband wants to have some say and the company owns the land, yeah maybe, maybe. There may be circumstances similar to that where you may be able to set up like that. But again, where it is just a pure nominee structure and you are just being apathetic to Thai Law, that's a bad way to go and you can end up in a situation like this where somebody gets raided and now the money you put in maybe in good faith, maybe it's just somebody who truly believes, "hey it's no big deal" and they are just ignorant of the fact that yeah Thai Law has specific provisions against foreigners owning land but they go ahead and invest in land anyway and then boom what is their situation? That company gets dissolved and that land gets confiscated is what's going to end up happening probably through the Legal Execution Department. So again this is not something to just shrug off; it's not something to just think is no big deal. You need to be well aware of this stuff if you are going to operate here in the Kingdom of Thailand.