Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing well frankly this in my opinion rather absurd and quite honestly Orwellian, and I question the legality of some of this as I will get into here in a moment, these issues associated with banking here in Thailand. 

Now I have done some videos recently, most notably I did two on the situation involving banking over in Vietnam where apparently some 86 million bank accounts were completely shut down, it's my understanding. Now I am going off on second-hand anecdotal evidence on that - and I did an initial video where I thought it was 86,000, which I thought was big enough - but I had to do a correction video to talk about the fact it was 86 million. So, I don't know that Thailand is the worst place to be at the moment. Sort of like when you see on the videos pertaining to economics and currency and sort of ongoing currency policy, you will see people talk about the dollar as the "cleanest dirty shirt." There's an argument to be made here in Thailand, that this is the best place to do business if for no other reason, it's not communist. We are seeing other jurisdictions running around doing things like closing 86 million accounts, even though we are seeing in my opinion, accounts, or I should say anecdotal evidence of not what you want to hear with regard to banking, there are other jurisdictions that are worse. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement when it comes to issues associated with banking. As I get into in videos made contemporaneously with this one, there seems to be some anecdotal evidence to suggest that at least the foreign community is looking increasingly at moving their money out of Thailand, which again based on these issues associated with bank account freezing and all of that stuff, I can understand what they are thinking; I'll get into that in the other video. That said, I think it is important to point out that there has been some comment from official channels on this and I am going to get into that here in a moment. 

That said, for those who are interested, we do long-form comment in our paid news service. If you are interested in getting the long-form content, you can email us, [email protected] and get some information on that. Also, while I am talking my own book, it is worth pointing out, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. We have got American Diner style food and we will put up some photos of the food here. People have asked me about that in some correspondence recently, they said, "hey you don't put up any photos," yeah we will put up some photos real quick. We have breakfast anytime, it's called Pancake Palace, as the name implies, breakfast anytime, we have also got American Diner style food, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, buffalo wings, chilli bowls, we have even got Coke in glass bottles. If you are interested come check us out in downtown Bangkok, links are in the description below. 

That said, getting back into all this fun and amazing banking stuff. I originally thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: DES urges calm amid locked bank accounts. Yeah, maybe I should have put up another, I did a video on this already where we put up the thumbnail from Animal House where it's Kevin Bacon, "remain calm, all is well" and then everything is going crazy around him. I don't know if they are watching my videos and maybe taking a page from the Memetic book if you will, on what I was talking about, but I think I made that video about banking specifically about, "oh I feel like the guy saying remain calm," and now people are saying remain calm even though this isn't really something in my opinion to be overly calm about. I mean where is the legal authority for some of this? I'll get into it here in a moment. That said, quoting directly: "The Digitally Economy and Society Ministry," - which by the way has only existed for a few years; this isn't like some longstanding Ministry in Thailand - "has opened a special "war room" to urgently address complaints over frozen bank accounts," - how about you just stop freezing bank accounts? You don't need a war room. And by the way, a "war room"? Why are they using war kind of terminology vernacular for this? What, are the banks at war with their own customers? Which everyone seems to forget, we are the customers of these Banks. It's not some magical privilege that we are granted to be able to use a bank. We are customers of a business. Quoting further: "after a surge of reports from online vendors and individuals who found their funds locked due to suspected links with so-called "mule accounts." Again, "suspected?" Where is the legal authority for this? Where are the warrants for this? Where are the Court orders for these shutdowns of people's bank accounts that are the life blood for their livelihoods? It is their money. Who gave these people, where is the legal right to do this? What is it based on? Because the Digital Economy and Society Ministry said so? Quoting further: "The move came after the Bank of Thailand, Commercial Banks and law enforcement agencies held urgent talks on Sunday to address growing public concern over the temporary suspension of the accounts." How about you stop suspending the accounts? How about you also tell us where do you get the legal authority to do this law enforcement, and Bank of Thailand and Commercial Banks? Again, this is classic communal punishment kind of talk, okay. They did this in Communist regimes, fascist regimes, "oh there are scammers, oh, there is some bad actor therefore everyone is punished. Oh, there are mule accounts out there; therefore, we are shutting down people's accounts," without due process of law from what I can tell. Where is the legal authority to do this? When the anti-money laundering office shuts down bank accounts from what I have understood in the past, there is due process; it has to be subject to an investigation; there has to be something akin to a warrant issued to shut down that account. Where is that here? 

That said, quoting further: "Mule Accounts" are often opened by unknowing parties to receive transfers from victims and financial fraud." But they are shutting down accounts that have been open for months if not years. I've got the correspondence from people who have told me this. And again, but because there is some mule accounts out there, they just exist, this is totally like COVID. "Oh, there's a disease, therefore you have to wear masks even though there was no scientific data to prove that it did anything. There was no legal authority which we went over it at the time. I went through the Communicable Diseases Act point by point and asked, "where does it give the right to compel people to wear masks?" but they did it, and now they are just sitting there like "oh, well we can do this because we say so. Well, it's our money and we are the customers of these Banks. So where do you, I mean what is this? This is ridiculous. Quoting further: "DES Permanent Secretary Wisit Wisitsora-at, Chairman of the meeting, said that the reports which prompted the concerns were not full seizures but temporary suspensions of suspect funds, pending verification." So we are seizing it, it's on you to prove that it's yours and to prove that it is legitimate but it's not a "full seizure", it's a "temporary seizure" but yet it is still seized. Quoting further: Quote: "It is not an account freeze in the strict legal sense," - what? Except for it is seized, and the funds are frozen in fact! Quoting further: "But a temporary suspension of certain amounts of money suspected to be tied to mule accounts." - hey remember when Nixon "temporarily" closed the gold window and "temporarily" ended the Bretton Woods system as we knew it up to that point in 1971? Did that "temporary closure" ever end? This is how they always come at things; they always say something's temporary. Especially when they know it's not. Quoting further: "Other balances and transactions may remain usable," Mr. Wisit said." May? Quoting further: "We urge the public not to panic. The suspension is only temporary and will be lifted once checks confirm no wrongdoing." So now your money in Thailand is subject to them seizing it at will and then there is a rebuttable presumption you will get it back if they check it and everything's hunky dory? 

Who signed on for this? This looks to me like just another one of the long trains of abuses that is coming from the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. I was very much hoping under this Government we would see a reversal of this. We saw this stuff brought in in the last government; it's terrible. Who is going to want to do business here if this is the banking environment? Yeah I get it, Vietnam's worse but that is not how things should be judged. I thought this was a free country. I thought we had due process of law. People's funds, people's money, people's property can't just be seized willy-nilly and then it's on you to prove up that it shouldn't be. 

I am going to get into another video where I talk about some comments that we have received that are related to this whole banking situation in Thailand and we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.