Transcript of the above video: 

Yet again we are discussing this sort of raid phenomenon that we are seeing quite a lot of here in Thailand; scrutiny being applied by Thai Law Enforcement and various folks here in Thailand especially foreign nationals are kind of under the microscope in relation to their Immigration and Work Permit status. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket News, that's thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: Phuket Immigration joins illegal business raids. So again I think something worth pointing out here is Phuket Immigration Police are now getting involved with this. So they are now scrutinizing this nominee issue, this Foreign Business Act issue, in conjunction with folks who are maintaining their visa status. I think Immigration's concern is these people are maintaining Immigration status fraudulently, that seems to be the concern. Quoting directly: "ST Accounting has already come under close scrutiny for setting up companies using nominees following a raid by Department of Special Investigation Officers (DSI) Officers in June last year." Yeah we talked about that on this channel and I said at the time, that was to my mind a pretty good indicator of kind of a watershed moment. We are really seeing a shift in paradigm, it's not just paradigm, a shift in law enforcement activities that theretofore, up to the point of June last year, we really weren't seeing that level of heightened scrutiny, that level of law enforcement activity in this kind of context. Since then, we have only seen this ramp up more as is evidenced from this article. Quoting further: "DSI Director General Police Major Suriya Singhkamol, in Phuket to lead the raid, explained that the company was under investigation for its involvement in facilitating nearly 7O foreigners illegally operating companies with holdings worth an estimated total of 440 billion Baht."

As we noted in other videos at that time and as I will bring up now, there also was the concern regarding land holding companies which we have discussed at great length on this channel over the past few years. Yes there may be certain narrow circumstances where a company is set up that then takes possession of real estate, real property, land here in Thailand. There are narrow circumstances where a foreigner may be involved in such an enterprise but generally speaking where a company is simply being utilized basically as a subterfuge if you will or to circumvent the laws regarding land holding companies, Thai Immigration, or not so much Immigration, but the Thai Authorities take that pretty darned seriously; now again that is not really the thrust of this video. I am making another video contemporaneously with this one discussing the land holding company side of things, but that said, at the end of the day what one should really take away from this video is that one) Thai Immigration is now involved in this stuff and again there is a great deal of heightened scrutiny which is being placed upon foreign nationals. I don't think it's a coincidence that we have recently seen a spate of incidences involving "foreigners behaving badly" and I think that has something to do with this; I've done videos talking about that. Now we are also seeing that down in Phuket there seems to be an acute concern regarding foreign nationals in Phuket and greater Thailand for that matter but it seems to be of a special concern down on that island that they are seeing foreigners come in. It may have something to do with the fact that Phuket has its own international airport so it sort of has its own corridor into Thailand of foreign nationals and those foreign nationals may be doing things differently than what we are seeing up here than Bangkok; Bangkok, Pattaya, the Thai Central plains if you will. We are not seeing quite the level of law enforcement activity up here and it appears that there seems to be acute issues again down in Phuket. 

So the thing to take away from this video is they are getting serious not only about Immigration and Labour Law Enforcement, but now the Foreign Business Act as well.