Transcript of the above video: 

We have been hearing a lot of anecdotal information about banking in Thailand, and I have received correspondence from folks who have said, "look I have been talking to our banks and they saying that is nothing wrong". I am not naming any one bank, I am not going to get into all of that, but what I am saying is right now, I am tending to view the anecdotal evidence with more veracity if you will, than maybe - I am not saying that banks are lying - but what I am saying is they may be engaging in PR, they don't really want it sort of known that there are folks that they are scrutinizing their accounts and they may be shutting them down, but I have been told by a very reputable source, someone who works closely with me oftentimes, and they have told me that yeah in fact there have been incidents where there has been scrutiny of banking activity in a bank account - especially involving foreigners - and they will go in and it may not even involve banking activity, they will go in, because everything is digitized now. This is also the big downside of all this digitization. They are able to quickly see who has got a Bank Account with a Tourist Visa. And there are some folks that will come in, have a Tourist Visa, get a Bank Account and then go ahead and convert over to some other type of Visa for example Retirement Visa or a Business Visa or something of this nature. So what is happening is the banks are calling these folks back in and they are saying, "hey do you still have a Tourist Visa?" If you don't and you have a Non-Immigrant Visa, apparently they are saying, "okay you are good to go". If you still have a Tourist Visa, they are shutting these Bank Accounts down. That is what we are hearing about anecdotally. 

That said, what is the ostensible reason for this? Well apparently, the pretext is that they are trying to eliminate "scam accounts". Now I have talked about this at length. People forget this. Money laundering was not a thing until 1987. In 1987 in the United States, the term "money laundering" was codified into law and they created a rule where basically moving money to obfuscate its source or storing it or whatever - basically using money in such a way that it obfuscates its source - can be deemed money laundering. My personal opinion is if you go back and look at all of that, frankly I think it should all be repealed. People have a right to privacy. What they do with their money is their own business. If the Government cannot make a case for a criminal activity against somebody, for the actual overt activity, they don't get to play like we are all Al Capone and come after us for some rink a dink paper chase “money laundering” problem.

That said, my beliefs are not what drives policy or law so that is not what we are currently living with in the real world and over here in Thailand, we are still dealing with this ongoing, "oh everything is for money laundering", when in reality in my opinion, as I have discussed in many other videos, all of this digitization is just for more totalitarianism, tracking and tracing everything we do. They tried to roll out the Digital Wallet, which would have been the end game for all of that, so now they are having to do it through more pedestrian means. But long story short, the upshot for foreigners here in Thailand is bank accounts yes, apparently are still being closed; they are calling people in; they're asking if they are still on a Tourist Visa, all under the auspices of discouraging money laundering and so-called "scam accounts".