Dogmatix

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.

Can you cite examples where Thai courts have rejected the land ownership by a foreigner and what the court ordered to be done to rectify the situation? I am unaware of any cases like this and can't think who would sue in the court. The Land Department has power to force the company to sell the land or it can seize the land and have the Legal Execution Dept sell it by public auction without going to court. But I have never heard of cases where this happened either. There have just been threatening noises made from time to time but, so far, never any action. What has become more difficult, since a letter sent to land offices by the Interior Ministry in the last days of the Thaksin government before the 2006 coup, ordering them to check, is registering land in the name of any company that has any foreigners associated with it at all, whether as shareholders, directors or just people hanging around in the Land Office, Before 2006 the instruction to land offices was just to refer to the director general any transaction where foreigners owned over 40% of the shares but it was easy to get around this by reducing the foreign shareholding to 40% in the Land Office before going up to the counter and increasing it back up to 49% before leaving the office.

Meant for Chinese, not falangs. PTT div yield is 5.25% net of 20% withholding tax, not north of 7%. I don’t think you can invest in stocks. Govt bonds or REITs only most likely. Listed REITs pay high divs and not bad. What makes you think land prices in urban areas eligible for this scheme have been falling? They did in the Tom Yung Kung crisis of 1997 which was devastating for Thailand but not in the 2008-9 GFC and not that I have seen during COVID. I seem to recall that the 2002 ministerial regulations required construction to commence within 1 year on raw land and would expect something similar to prevent speculation on raw land. Of course you could buy a ready made house. The capital appreciation potential for structures is different from raw land, as most rich Thais want to demolish the house, even if in good condition, and build their own design. You might only get the value of the land. So best to build a modest shack. no rights of inheritance for foreign heirs but they get the sales proceeds. The estate must sell the land within 12 months, if heirs are Thai. Hidden costs. You need the minister’s approval for each transaction. Better factor in a signing fee. Since you will have to wait for God knows how long for the paperwork, sellers are likely to charge a higher price, if Thai buyers are interested, and you could be gazumped by a Thai buyer while waiting anyway. These were all factors that came to mind when the law was passed in 1999 but when the ministerial regs came out in 2002, the qualifying investments were no longer available. Anyway I had already gone the company route in 2000.

Not good news. No law means a vacuum that can be more easily filled by the next government drafting a completely new bill that bans recreational sales completely. If there is already a law with certain restrictions in place, it will be harder to amend that, than to draft a new law, if there is nothing in place.

Did this a couple of times at CW but never again. Horrendous wait. Once they insisted on an edit. So back to the translation agency and then repeat the whole thing. Once they lost the original document and made no effort to find it. Just shrugged it off. Their English is very poor. They let garbage through and insist on edits that make no sense to a native speaker but don’t bother trying to argue with them. They have the power. in future I will pay the translation agency to do this tedious job. Well worth it if they require an edit. Let them sort it out for themselves.