Dogmatix

Just let it go. Not all Thais are interested in football. So using taxpayers money for this is not justified. The World Cup damages productivity as people stay up late to watch it and billions are wasted in illegal betting. The whole thing is a big yawn.

Under the Civil Registration Act district offices have an obligation to register all foreigners residing in their districts. The interpretation of “residing” seems to be generally taken as being on longer term visas, eg NON-B and marriage and retirement extensions. Your DO is in breach of the law for not registering you. The problem is that DO heads are allowed to operate like little hitlers and often come up with their own laws. If you want to pursue it, you could write to BORA in Bkk which supervises DOs. If they ignore the letter, you could sue the head of registrations at your DO in the Administrative Court which handles disputes between private citizens (including foreigners) and government departments. This is a big hassle for you but also for government officials who get sued and they often have to keep going to court hearings in retirement as cases drag on. So they are generally scared of getting sued there. First of all I would recruit a lawyer or any well educated, knowledgeable Thai to go along with you and ask to see the head of registrations to sort out a misunderstanding. Show him the relevant section of the Civil Registration Act and ask him to explain why he thinks your case is not covered in the law. A work around that has been done in similar cases would be to get a Thai friend in another district to register you in their household and then transfer to your own district. I don’t think they can refuse to transfer someone who is already on a tabien baan, as there are specific regulations for this and they are not allowed to “disappear” people already registered. People who cannot be registered in a specific household, eg when a householder reports someone has left their household but there is no corresponding report of their new household or new borns reported by hospitals but not yet registered in family household, have to be registered in the district’s central pool of people registered but unattributed to a household. I think it would be a headache for your DO and/or the one you leave if your DO refused to register in a household a person already registered somewhere else.

If these cruds are overstaying and breaking other laws, why can't the BiB arrest them all the year round? If they can arrest foreigners on Interpol red notices, why can't they put Boss on one and have the murderous jerk arrested overseas and brought back to Thailand in chains?

Thai Rath also reported further developments on the arrest of a Chinese national called Sao and his Thai driver Satawat, 36. He was driving his boss around as if he were a diplomat. This has already been reported but it is still not clear what the difference is between just driving your boss around and driving him around like a diplomat. Does the latter mean bribing corrupt traffic cops to supply a police escort?

One important thing they did for the World Bank Conference some years ago was to round up all the lady boys who hang out in Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy and other red light districts and tell they would their asses in jail, if they dared come out during the conference. One thing they were very scared of was that one of the delegates would be found with his throat slit by a ladyboy and his Rolex and gold necklace missing. Nana without the ladyboy pick pockets and street walkers was bliss. Pity they couldn't get rid of them permanently.

How convenient that Mr Boy died after selling him the revolver for 20k and that he never knew the name of his dope dealer. A few more plastic bags over his head should change that.

You have to understand he was allegedly handpicked by Gen Watchman as his bagman which is supposedly why he was flying all over the country dealing with high profile money spinning businesses like casinos when he was nominally only head of Immigration. After his fall from grace which cannot be discussed frankly here, Watchman was said to have intervened and saved Joke from prison or worse. He is assumed to have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to secure Joke’s rehabilitation and reinstatement into the police. Whether true or not it is obvious that he had some very powerful to avoid prison and come back to suc a powerful job. But with near total lack of accountability in Thai society it is neigh impossible for the Thai people to learn the facts behind this highly suspicious looking career.

Still a little unclear what joke meant. Is it OK for Chinese gangsters to operate in the Kingdom, if they have naturalized as Thais and renounced Chinese nationality. Is it only dual nationals he sees as a problem? I wonder how many dual national Chinese gangsters there are. Chinese, which includes Taiwanese, Hong Kongers and Macanese in Thai govt classification, are indeed the largest nationality applying for Thai nationality each year. However Chinese law strictly prohibits dual nationality. The Thai Ministry of Interior writes to the embassies of all newly naturalised Thais to inform them in the hope that country will do their dirty work for them and revoke their original nationality because the Thai law doesn’t have its own provisions to do this. Does Joke have information that all the Chinese gangsters are able to bribe the Chinese embassy to intercept the letters from the MOI and throw them away in order to retain Chinese nationality? Another issue is that Special Branch and the National Intelligence Agency thoroughly vet all applicants for Thai nationality and check them for home country, Thai and Interpol criminal records. The NIA is also supposed to check their home and business circumstances with unannounced visits, if appropriate. Is Joke saying that all this vetting is ineffective because they can easily bribe their way to Thai nationality? Another possibly is that these Chinese gangsters don’t have dual nationality at all but have fake Thai ID cards provided by corrupt district office officials which has been reported in the past. That would also avoid the need to bribe the Chinese govt not to revoke their Chinese nationality. If this is the case, I hope Joke will also have these criminal district officers rounded up in the same time frame. Finally, I wonder what will happen to Joke, if his master, Prawit, loses power at the next election or simply falls off the hook. There must be a lot of other cops who didn’t appreciate his rapid promotions or his reinstatement to the force after his mysterious fall from grace for reasons that cannot be discussed here..

Great to know that all these dual national Chinese gangsters will be cleaned up by big joke in 3 weeks. But that will still leave the vast majority of Chinese gangsters that hold only one nationality - Thai.

I suspect the numbers are more. The frozen pensions group on FB estimates 500,000 with frozen pensions, mostly in Oz, NZ and Canada but there must be more than that with pensions that aren’t frozen in the EU, US, Philippines and other countries where they qualify for the increments. Then there are expats and foreigners who own property and shares in the UK and have to pay UK tax on rent and dividends. Since it has been mooted before the Treasury must think it’s worth going for. We already know from the frozen pensions they feel taking money from expats, especially pensioners, is like taking candy from a baby. They have no effective way to fight back via the ballot box and voters in the UK hate them because they escaped the misery of British weather and incompetent and corrupt government there.

It is indeed to do with PayPal as explained in another thread. PP has to verify ID of users and chose a private sector Thai company to do it that has a wonderful system that can only deal with 13 digit Thai ID numbers. Even PRs, who also have a 13 digit Thai ID number are excluded. PP could also have opted for manual verification of ID, as done by many others but chose not to, obviously thinking the business from expats not worth the trouble. Thais already have their own system of payments with no fees. You transfer bank to bank online and send the payment slip via LINE. They don’t need to pay fees to an American company to do that. I expect PP will be disappointed with the results of its decision to go onshore in Thailand and ditch its expat customers.

It is a form of vote buying but getting the citizens to use their own money to buy their own votes. The unseen part is that the criminals who organize illegal football gambling will make a lot more money, if the games are on TV and they are willing to pay big money under the table to make that happen. Then they can be pushed for campaign contributions for the elections next year too.

A hammer would do the job.

The UK has exported countless wanted criminals to Thailand where they often become pillars of the Pattaya expat community engaging in property scams, drug dealing, brothel businesses, call centre scams, murder and other businesses appropriate to their education, skils and experience. HMG doesn't seem to bother with preventing them from travelling or making much effort to get them back (I wonder why) and Thailand welcomes them with open arms and LTR visas, if they can drop enough cash. The Pattaya BiB are also very happy to welcome new clients to their protection business. A few years back a British ambassador attended a charity event organised by two British crims wanted in the UK for fraud and had himself photographed with them, showing how much due diligence the embassy, which now bills itself purely as a promoter of British commerce, does on UK business projects it supports in the Kingdom. Finding he had more of an affinity for business than diplomacy, after rubbing shoulders like this with the British business community, he cut short his ambassadorship and left the FCO soon afterwards for a private sector job with a leading Thai beverage producer.

Time was that you could go to the airport, pay the maximum overstay fine of 20k, leave the country and fly back again with a new visa and start it all over again. But that came to an end a few years and, to be fair, the government gave months of warning to overstayers to leave when they could still pay the fine and come back again without blacklisting. This guy and his wife could easily have got their visas in order but chose not to. They could also have refrained from keeping dangerous dogs and not keeping them under control. They are obviously not overly bright but no sympathy for them for behaving in a dangerously anti social manner.

"The Banglamung Police Chief Colonel Nawin Sinturat told the Pattaya News they were notified from neighbors of the suspect that the foreigners who lived in this house had previously caused some trouble. Their dogs were allegedly chasing after kids and motorbikes." He kept 3 Dobermans who were allegedly threatening the safety of kids and others, so neighbours called police. How would that play out in Germany, if a foreign overstayer behaved like that I wonder? Not well I expect. He deserves to be booted out the country and blacklisted for life. That type of dangerous trash is not needed in Thailand.

His dogs would certainly be shot and killed in the US and him probably too.

All tatoos are disgusting. So what's the difference?

Not really true. Net foreign portfolio inflows on the equity side have been strongly positive for the last few months.

"Knowing well that there could be a backlash like those seen in 2002, the Prayut government could have learnt a lesson or 2 from the mistakes and the criticism against the move in 2002 to look at how to improve on them." Very poor reporting with no research done. There was no backlash whatsoever in 2002, simply because hardly anyone was aware these regulations had been issued and anyway the regulations were a deliberate attempt by the Thaksin regime to sabotage the law by specifying qualifying investments that didn't exist to prevent foreigners from taking advantage of the law. The backlash took place in 1999 when the amendment to the Land Code was railroaded through parliament by the Democrat led government with Chuan Leekpai at its helm. There was a lot of opposition to the bill, including from Chuan's own backbench Democrat MPs, particularly to the original bill that allowed foreigners with Thai spouses to buy a rai of land without having to invest 40 million in other investments. Once the dust had settled and they got the law passed in parliament, the Chuan government somehow got cold feet and didn't issue the enabling ministerial regulations before it got trounced by Thaksin in the 2000 elections. The Thaksin administration dragged its heels for two years and then issued the regulations it did in 2002 to guarantee the failure of the new law. But the Chuan government was to blame for successfully fighting a monumental battle in parliament but failing to follow through with the enabling legislation. Since the justification of the law was to help revive the real estate sector devastated by the Tom Yum Kung crisis, it was inexcusable that they didn't activate the law immediately.

"Thais have been labelling the scheme as ‘selling the country’ to foreigners." Most of my Thai friends, including those of Chinese origin, were talking about the government selling the country to the Chinese.

It is pathetic that the government went so far with this without any proper planning or PR campaign, knowing there woud be a backlash, only to chicken out. But, fortunately, this has no impact on foreign investment either way because it was never aimed at mainstream corporate foreign direct investment or institutional portfolio investment in stocks and bonds - only at individual investors who are an insignificant source of foreign investment flows. It would have been good for a few property developers, brokers, lawyers etc but the impact on the Thai economy would have been minimal as it was to be limited to people with the new LTR visas making other qualifying investments of 40 mil which is a fairly limited market. It was a ridiculous concept to offer it to LTR visa holders only. This is an untested type of visa offered to unknown people who are don't have to be in Thailand laready. The law was passed in 1999 and the opportunity should have been offered to permanent residents a long time ago. They are people who have already been in Thailand for a number of years, have proven contributions to Thai society and have clean Thai and home country police records. Offering to people whose main qualification is a bunch of hot cash they want to drop was stupid and asking for trouble.

Most types of land lease are limited to 30 years for Thais and foreigners alike. It would be a good idea to extend this to 50, 90, 99, 125 and periods common overseas. However, leasing law is pretty scant in Thailand and buying a lease doesn't give you the same ownership rights, as in most developed countries. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that, once the lessor has died or sold the land, the new owner is under any obligation to honour the lease, since a lease is an agreement under the Civil and Commercial Code that binds only the two contracting parties, not future owners of the land or inheritors of the leasehold. So it is also not clear that heirs can inherit the right. All these details have to specified in the contract which Thai lawyers working on behalf of the land owner will not be inclined to do. Even if they are included, the leasehold or heirs would have sue in the Civil Courts for damages after violation of these terms. That means not getting the lease back, if successful, but having to quantify the actual financial damage suffered as a result of breach of contract and trying to claim for that. Good luck to anyone who ever has to do this.

"The four categories include high-wealth persons, retirees, individuals who intend to work from Thailand, and specialists who possess certain skills." Unless retiress have so much in assets that their don't care or have no children, the inability to pass on the land to heirs through inheritance will be a problem for many of them. It could also be a problem for a retired couple, if one predeceases the other, if registered solely in the deceased's name or even in joint names. Transfer to the surviving party may require re-establishing right to buy. The now expired treaty rights for foreigners to buy land in the Land Code specifically provided for foreign heirs to inherit the land but this provision does not. So the estate of the deceased is obliged to sell the land within 12 months and give the proceeds to foreign heirs. You can imagine the scope this gives Thai lawyers and executors to fleece foreign heirs residing overseas and having no clue about Thai laws.

The original version of the bill to amend the Land Code like this in 1999 had a category for foreigners married to Thais who got exemption from the requirement to invest 40 billion. This hasn't been revived. I wonder why not? 555 Why are PRs not included in this? Perhaps not many would agree to the 40 million but there are many PRs who are not married to Thais and would love to have a piece of land in their own names. They are just offering to the new fangled LTR visa holders because that was a pet project of theirs, even though it might not survive, and ignoring PR status that has stood the test of time since 1927.