Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a recent crackdown regarding businesses that involve foreigners that are operating in such a way that they are contravening the rules on restricted occupations and restricted business activity for foreigners. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: 1,000 arrests made in crackdown on proxies. Quoting directly: "Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop said several of the businesses were registered by Thais who were proxies of foreign citizens, despite the business being reserved exclusively for Thai Nationals." So again, this is another one of these situations where the restricted occupations and the restricted business objectives, corporate objectives, are very important. As we have discussed in other videos, the Thai Foreign Business Act does basically restrict certain types of business activities to Thai only. That said, it is not an unheard-of practice for people to go ahead and try to use nominee shareholders in order to meet the legal or at least the formal legal requirement associated with at least on-paper ownership by a Thai National. The problem with this is that again, an inert nominee is by definition illegal, as we've discussed in other videos. And as we have discussed in another video made contemporaneously with this one wherein we discuss the fact that they are cracking down on this, it does look more and more like digitization is playing a role in the enhanced ability of Immigration as well as law enforcement, as well as the Commerce Department and those tasked with dealing with regulation of business here in Thailand, digitization is making it easier if you will or more straightforward, to go after people on a nationwide basis, who are operating in contravention of relevant Thai Law.

For this reason, again it's worth pointing out how important this is with regard to the news on this, because again in the past while this was illegal, they really didn't have the ability to see everybody that was engaging in it, and they really didn't have the ability to effectively enforce that law. These days they do, and as the situation evolves, I expect we will probably see more of this in the future not less.