Transcript of the above the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a recent report of a hit-and-run case, that then became sort of entangled or sort of got upgraded if you will, to a wrongful death case, and then it got entangled with matters pertaining to the ongoing crackdown on nominee companies here in Thailand. Let's jump in here. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Brit director re-arrested and sent to Koh Samui Prison after his bail was revoked amid expanded charges. 

Real quickly before we get into the sort of details of the cited article, I've had folks tell me this and I've had correspondence to this effect and things, I've talked about it a fair bit on the channel too. People have sort of asked, they have said, "Hey, can we support you even though we know you are not monetized. We may not need to avail ourselves of a law firm, is there anything else we can do?" Well look, if you are ever in Bangkok, or if you live in Bangkok and you are ever in the mood for American Diner style food, as well as American style breakfast, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, the name is Pancake Palace. As the name implies, breakfast anytime, again including American Diner style food: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, chilli dogs; we've got chilli bowls, we have tacos now, we have got grilled cheese sandwiches, we have got Coke in glass bottles, all kinds of good stuff. If you're interested, links are in the description below. Pancake Palace, we would love to see you. 

Now jumping back in here to thaiexaminer.com, quoting directly: "British tour boat boss Duncan Wilcock was jailed after a top Thai doctor died from a Koh Phangan hit-and-run. Police upgraded charges to causing death, cited a positive cocaine test and uncovered an alleged nominee business network now under scrutiny." Quoting further: "A Koh Phangan hit-and-run that left a leading Thai doctor dead has exploded into one of Thailand's most high-profile criminal cases." If I may, this kind of reminds me a little bit, going back a year so, maybe 18 months now, of the so-called beach bully case, although this seems to be on a whole different order of magnitude. That seemed to be kind of a situation involving somebody who was acting inappropriately, albeit it did not result in death, so let's put it that way. That said, quoting further: "On Monday, the Koh Samui Provincial Court jailed British suspect Duncan Wilcock, 51, after revoking his bail and upgrading the case to reckless driving causing death. At the same time, Police widened their probe, alleging cocaine use, multiple driving offences, and an illegally operated tour boat business run through Thai nominees." Now I urge those who are watching this video, go check out Thai Examiner. As usual they do an exhaustive analysis of everything going on here. 

As we have discussed in other videos, touring, tourism - anything associated with tourism - is considered a highly restricted occupation to Thai nationals. So involvement in that kind of business even usage of "Thai nominees", again determining whether or not someone is legally considered a nominee is a different matter and we have to leave it to the adjudicators to do that. But long story short, again as I have discussed in other videos, highly restricted occupations, as well as land ownership through corporate structures, are the two main things that authorities in Thailand are looking at right now, and if anything, I have talked to a number of folks regarding this stuff, if anything, I think that this Crackdown is going to get more stringent, not less, as time moves forward, especially as they are finding these situations involving one thing and then they'll turn out to be all sorts of myriad other issues sort of behind the curtain if you will. I have to presume that as we go through the rest of this summer, we'll probably see more cases like this. 

That said, the thrust of this video I wanted to get into was actually bail revocation. So quoting further: "At 3:45pm on Monday, the Court considered the revised circumstances.  Investigators argued that the seriousness of the case had escalated significantly. The Court agreed and revoked bail during the pre-trial detention phase. Consequently, the suspect's release ended immediately." 

Yeah, look more and more, and the reason for this video, we are seeing situations where bail is being revoked as in this case, or even bail is being denied all together. I did a video recently involving about two dozen foreigners down in the same region, the islands in the Gulf, and they are being detained without bail as their nominee structures are being heavily, heavily scrutinized. What can I say? We are looking at a situation where the authorities in Thailand consider this a national security matter, and on top of that, again bail is not a foregone conclusion. Now in most cases, due to the strain on the current infrastructure of the correction system etc., it's not oftentimes considered optimal by the Courts to remand somebody to be detained while they await further adjudication. So, in most cases you will see folks being permitted bail or something in lieu of bail; again, they may be releasable on what we call ROR. That said, this is changing and especially in the context of foreigners behaving badly, I think more and more we are going to see situations where perhaps bail isn't even issued to begin with, or again, and the teaching point for this video is look, even though you are issued bail initially, if it's determined by the Court that there has been a material change in circumstances or a material change to the underlying nature of the charges, as to what occurred here where this person was initially detained after this alleged hit-and-run incident, the person who had been hit or allegedly hit, was still alive, okay the person was charged, they were allowed bail. Then that person passed away, and at that point the Court said, "hey this has now risen to a whole other level, we're going to go ahead and revoke bail pending further adjudication." Now that is not to say the Court made later again decide to go ahead and reissue bail; that's not outside the realm of possibility. 

But I think the thing to take away from this video is one, bail can change. I think that's something folks need to understand if they are ever going to find themselves interacting with the legal system, especially in a criminal context here in Thailand, but also the thing to take away from this video is the fact that more and more, we are seeing the Courts taking a much more hardline stance from the get-go especially as it pertains to nominees, and in cases involving what I've described as "foreigners behaving badly" in Thailand, in situations where a Thai has lost their life, yeah I think it's safe to say bail is probably not a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination under such circumstances.