Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Big Joke yet again, a topic on this channel quite often. He is definitely an active member of law enforcement here in Thailand and so-called gray businesses. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Chinese gang links under scrutiny. Quoting directly: "Following a number of crackdowns on several illegal pubs in Bangkok and Chon Buri, Deputy National Police Chief Surachate Hakpan is pledging to prosecute and extradite Chinese Nationals who are found to be involved in "grey businesses" in Thailand. The raid on Jinling Pub followed a tip sent in by ex-politician and former massage parlor tycoon Chuwit Kamolvisit, who urged the Justice Ministry and the police to investigate money laundering by Chinese crime bosses in "grey businesses" in the country."

Yeah, this seems to be something of import to law enforcement at the moment this notion of sort of "grey businesses". On the one hand, I think we are probably seeing a disproportionate amount of Chinese involvement in this mostly due to proximity but believe me when I say there are plenty of grey businesses that are run by folks of all nationalities out there. And look just from my experience, my observation these past few years; it has been my experience that when Big Joke sort of sets his sights on something, he tends to kind of keep focused on it. When he was running Immigration, it was interesting to me that he would focus it seemed oftentimes on financial issues especially in the retirement context associated with maintenance of Retirement Visas here in Thailand. His focus became like laser focus. He was very keen on kind of rooting out issues with respect to that. Now obviously, his mandate is going to be a little bit more general, it is going to be different now but something to keep in mind and those who are kind of keeping track of this, again the Thai Government is taking money laundering pretty seriously. Certain illegal activities including gambling, they take very seriously, so again something to definitely steer away from on an individual basis. 

The other thing to keep in mind, in my opinion with respect to things like money laundering, there may also be sort of a revenue incentive from the standpoint of tax generation where look if these grey businesses are primarily operating in order to essentially circumvent a substantial amount of their taxes, that may end up being a bigger problem even than underlying activity because generally speaking countries, states, don't really like when their tax system is circumvented. We saw that in the zero dollar Tourism thing that was happening some years back where these tourists operations that were bringing in tourists, they were taking around the country to their own sort of closed circuit of venues and then there was virtually no taxes being remitted to the Thai Government. That caused a real problem. So again, I think that same paradigm might be prevailing here. I don't know exactly how this is going to play out but we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.