Transcript of the above video: 

There has been a lot of talk recently about matters pertaining to the push against nominees in Thailand, especially the moves by law enforcement to scrutinize Thai corporations to ascertain whether or not nominees are being utilized so foreign nationals can run these operations as a front to either conduct business that is restricted to Thais, or just outright illegal business. And one of the major priorities of law enforcement right now is usage of these corporations for people to basically use land; for foreigners to basically use a company to effectively own land in contravention of Thai Law. Thai Law stipulates foreigners cannot own land without the Minister of Interior signing off on that. In the time since it has been changed to relaxing it down to that level, we have only seen eight situations in the past 26 years where that has been utilized. So as a practical matter, foreign land ownership is not legal in Thailand, it's just not. 

Now that said, I've had calls and I've interacted with various folks over the past few weeks who are, and I get it, a lot of them detrimentally relied on bad advice in the past and they are trying to sort of rectify their situation, but in some circumstances it can be rectified; it depends on the underlying facts in the given case. For those who are interested, it is probably a good idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed on that specifically. But I have also seen a lot of people that are trying to like massage the language or sort of interpret their way into being able to do what they want to do, when in point in fact it's just really not possible.

But I thought I'd make this video because the US-Thai Treaty of Amity is arguably the most favourable legal document toward any group of foreigners you could find in Thailand insofar as - as I have discussed in other videos - it provides national treatment to Americans doing business in Thailand which allows them to own their companies 100% notwithstanding the provisions of the Foreign Business Act. So for business purposes, doing business, the Treaty of Amity is very useful. But it's also useful in defining the negative insofar as if this is the most permissive document that exists sort of in Thai-American jurisprudence - but in this case it's also incorporated into Thai jurisprudence - if this is one of the most permissive documents and it speaks a certain language regarding the ability of foreigners to utilize or own land, then clearly we can extrapolate that thinking more broadly in order to understand that yeah Thailand really, really does restrict what can only be described as, I quote, "exploitation of land". And note that phrase, because that comes directly from the citation I'm going to draw from and it also does not just pertain to ownership, "exploitation" of land is what Thai Authorities are concerned about.

So I decided to go ahead and cite the actual terms of the Treaty itself. This is at treaties.un.org. This is the text of the US-Thai Treaty of Amity; it's under No. 9345.

“Thailand and the United States of America.       

Treaty of amity and economic relations (with notes of understanding and exchange of notes) signed at Bangkok, on 29 May 1966.” Important to point out, this has been fully ratified by all organs of state in Thailand as well as by the US Senate and the President of the United States in 1966 which pursuant to Article 6 of the US Constitution makes it the law of the land of the United States as well. So that's important to point out.

That being said, over here under Subsection 2. Quoting directly: "Each party reserves the right to prohibit aliens from establishing or acquiring interests, or to limit the extent to which aliens may establish or require interests, in enterprises engaged within its territories in communications, transport, fiduciary functions, banking involving depository functions, the exploitation of land or other natural resources, or domestic trade in indigenous agricultural products, provided that it shall accord to nationals and companies of the other Party treatment no less favourable in this connection than that accorded nationals and companies of any third country (correction)." 

So the point being, even under the Treaty of Amity - which again is about the most permissive in terms of plenary and legal authorization, is about the most permissive piece of Thai jurisprudence that I can think of toward foreigners - even it specifically restricts and reserves the rights to Thailand to be able to restrict foreigners engaged in the “exploitation of land”; not just ownership, exploitation. So ownership is already precluded. But I've had a lot of people saying, "Oh but we want to do this, that and the other thing." If you're trying to come to Thailand to engage in real estate development, you may want to think again. Again, it's not just a matter of whether or not a given instrument is legal - for example a long-term lease - but if you are trying to basically derive your benefits, derive value, extract value out of the land in Thailand, that is a concern of the Thais, because that is something that is considered to be reserved to the Thais. Again they wouldn't have explicitly reserved it in the Treaty, that is the most permissible Treaty of any of the other Treaties, they wouldn't have explicitly reserved that unless they considered it very, very important. And it's important to understand the thinking here. Again, if you're just looking to come to Thailand to buy something or lease something to use it residentially, fair enough. But again if you're trying to extract value out of the land, that is for lack of a better term exploitation, and again it's specifically restricted under the Treaty of Amity and if it's restricted under the Treaty of Amity, you don't get much more permissive than that. So to extrapolate that logic and apply it more broadly, basically no, foreigners are neither allowed to own land in Thailand nor to exploit land and thereby extract value from land here in the Kingdom of Thailand.