Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, "if legal form isn't the standard we're going to go by, then what's the point of law in the first place?" I know that sounds strange, but I think it's a valid question, all things considered.

I'm talking about this in the context of what can only be described as a paradigm shift within the law enforcement if you will, a policy making apparatus also known as the Department of Business Development and they're talking about this, this is coming online in April, their shift in policy regarding nominees. There is going to be a great deal more scrutiny associated with setting up companies that involve foreigners, and it remains to be seen exactly what this looks like, but there has been discussion on this. I've done videos previously - a number of them regarding this - but I think further drilling down on this issue is warranted especially - there was something about this that was just sort of bothering me conceptually, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I read this excerpt that I'm going to read from Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand hunts "nominees" - a risky game that ends in prison and corporate erasure. Quoting directly: "The end of "form over substance". The most significant shift is conceptual. Regulators are no longer focused on legal form." I read that again. "Regulators are no longer focused on legal form." So what are they focused on? The law is the way, the power of the regulators’ springs from the law. The regulations are created from the law, and the regulators, their authority to enforce those regulations, stems from the law. So if the legal form is not going to be our guide stone, then what are we doing? If anybody was accusing anybody of being arbitrary and capricious, reading that one line would be enough, it would be a strong point in favour of that argument. Again, "regulators are no longer focused on legal form." Then why do we have these people? To run around and just arbitrarily and capriciously tell us how our businesses are running incorrectly? 

I'm going to start again on the whole quote of the excerpt. "The most significant shift is conceptual. Regulators are no longer focused on legal form. They are focused on economic substance." Well what does that mean? You know who else was focused on economic substance? Communists. That's who else was focused on that. And they used arbitrary and capriciousness to say that this was good and that was bad. That's why we have the law; that's why we use legal forms, so we have a clear, objective way of judging whether or not something is legal or not, whether or not something is in line with the law. Quoting further: "With the use of Data, AI and inter-agency integration, hiding reality behind documentation is no longer viable." 

Okay on the point of nominees themselves - and those are illegal in Thailand - and if it's determined that somebody is just purely on a company as a total front, they have nothing to do with the company whatsoever, I understand that. But where you have got regulators who are no longer concerning themselves with legal form but are instead getting into some murky notion of "economic substance", it sounds to me like a bunch of regulators being nosy into how the internal workings of a business work and they are using “AI” and Data, which every time I hear that, that just means it's basically just a smoke screen for arbitrary and capricious overreach into private business activities. Again, I had a problem with this whole thing, this whole initiative, and I couldn't quite figure out why and it's this right here. It's this notion, "regulators are no longer focused on legal form". Well then what are we doing? So why are the laws even written down? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Again, it remains to be seen how this plays out so I'm going to kind of tamp down my hyperbole for a moment, my dyspepsia, but that said, this is very concerning and I really don't like the notion of regulators running around and just saying, "well we don't care about legal form", well then how can the public have any standard to do business without relying on legal formality and the law itself. Again it remains to be seen how this plays out, so we will certainly be keeping people updated on this channel as the situation evolves.