Emerald Development - Phuket

[KP67]

Does anyone know the status of Emerald Development's projects in Phuket after last years fiasco?  Bought off plan in City Life (lesson learned - never again).  I have not been to Phuket in two years and so have not been able to see first hand if any construction is actually moving forward.  I had heard that they had secured new Chinese investors for funding but Emerald has been quiet as of late so I am assuming it was rumor only.  I was hoping to make some recovery without going to court but it looks like it is time to move forward, I have a good local lawyer ready to go.  Has anyone actually recovered money from Emerald after the fraud charges ? I have several other properties in Phuket that have all turned out well, this has been my only bad experience to date.

[KittenKong]

I suggest you read this and other articles:

https://thethaiger.com/news/opinion/comment-the-fall-of-mai-sawit-ketroj-emerald-development-group

 

I expect that someone will have started a class action by now, and if so there is probably a report about it on thaiger somewhere.

 

What goes on in Phuket often makes Pattaya developers look like angels.

[KP67]

Thank you, I have read all of the articles. All are from last year, I am looking for new information. 

[KittenKong]

From the article I linked to:

" As of today, litigants have filed civil and criminal charges against Sawit Ketroj. Contractors have also filed criminal charges against him for default on payments. And now the Thai Government have filed fraud charges against him with the police investigation ongoing. "

 

You need to contact the police/court in Phuket and ask them who has filed the charges. Then you need to contact whoever that is so that you can join with them.

 

But I suspect that all the money has gone and that any court action will only benefit the lawyers.

[KittenKong]

13 hours ago, KP67 said:

I have a good local lawyer ready to go.

 

If he is ready to go, why dont you let him get on with it? Surely it is his job to find out these things for you?

[baansgr]

Just wonder what the lawyers fees would be,  probably  upfront  retainer of a few hundred  thousand 

[neeray]

11 minutes ago, Chasstar325 said:

Not quite sure I understand your reference to Drama queen?

It's easy to mouth off when it's not your investment that went down the tube !

[KP67]

Thanks for the information.  I had someone go by and take pictures - no work, sales office closed.  Now that I have gotten an education on buying off-plan, I guess an education on the court system is next.  I will say again however that all of my other Thai projects have gone well, and I expected to encounter one like this eventually.  Part of being an absentee investor.  I have countermeasures for such issues in my home country but I don't think they will help here.  I will come back and check on things in low season.

[Chasstar325]

Please feel free to ask me anything about the court system. I flew into court 3 times , my wife 5 times last year.

Super slow process, completely disrespectful, rude and unsympathetic.

I personally told the judge what the developer had done to me and my wife’s family. He couldn’t have cared less.

You will need proper representation, not just any attorney, as the whole court room is usually already paid off.

I have multiple pictures of the land , drones flew overhead capturing the entire unfinished project.

None of Sawit Ketroj aka Emeralds projects are being worked on. The most recent legal claims stand at 793 million baht.

[KittenKong]

On 1/25/2019 at 12:26 AM, KP67 said:

I guess an education on the court system is next.

How much have you actually lost? I doubt that legal action would be worth the cost, especially as this developer seems to have no resources at all.

[Chasstar325]

All of Emerald websites are down.

Emerald developers no longer exist.

Sawit Ketroj remains free despite stealing hundreds of people’s money.

Just another land scammer to add to Thailand’s long list of thieves.

[Colin151]

I have also have problems buying an apartment at Citylife. I am very disappointed. the construction is very delayed and as other posters have mentioned, Emerald Development Group has disappeared. Another company called Chivalry Co limited have taken over the project and claim they have no connection with Emerald (which seems pretty unlikely) and want me to sign new contracts. I am unsure of the best way to proceed. If anyone else has bought an Emerald Development Group apartment can you please post here or message me. 

[ThomasThBKK]

2 hours ago, Colin151 said:

I have also have problems buying an apartment at Citylife. I am very disappointed. the construction is very delayed and as other posters have mentioned, Emerald Development Group has disappeared. Another company called Chivalry Co limited have taken over the project and claim they have no connection with Emerald (which seems pretty unlikely) and want me to sign new contracts. I am unsure of the best way to proceed. If anyone else has bought an Emerald Development Group apartment can you please post here or message me. 

i have no idea about any of these projects, so take that with a grain of salt.

 

if someone takes over a project, he's extremely likely to take over the liabilities too (tho i don't know what exactly happened in this case) - that's prolly the reason they want you to sign a new contract, to get out of the old, for them unfavourable contracts.

 

Do not sign anything without talking with a bkk based lawyer or better team up with other owners and go to a lawyer together. And with lawyer i mean international law firm with farrangs working there.

[Colin151]

Sorry for the delayed reply. I've been busy the past few days. Thanks for the advice. The problems with using lawyers in Thailand seems to be the general corruption in the property business there. Like a previous poster said it seems unlikely legal action would result in getting any money back, if the developer really wanted to hide the stolen money and the justice system is also corrupt. My worry is that throwing more money at the problem will just be throwing more money away.

 

Myself and my wife recently went to Phuket to find out information about previous cases against Emerald Development Group/Sawit Ketroj. The police at Patong refused to file a complaint for us as they said we had to go directly to the court in Phuket town. We went to the court in Phuket town and some other official places. They said there are many cases against Sawit Ketroj on record.  We managed to get a translator to help us who found out more information. There was a big court case last year where many ripped off buyers clubbed together, but the case was dismissed..... It is now apparently in appeal. 

 

We spoke to a local lawyer who just advised hiring him for about 300,000 baht (instead of joining a joint case).  We were reluctant as he said he had another similar client who had not yet got any money back after a couple of years since filing proceedings. 

 

This new company called Chivalry co Ltd who have taken over the Citylife project have appeared from nowhere. Its a brand new company. They say they have great credentials and we were given a lot of great sales type talk etc.  I agree that signing new contract with them is risky. They want to cancel the old contract with emerald group first. 

We have been given draft contracts from Chivalry and the format of them is EXACTLY the same as the contracts we had from Emerald Development group. It was obviously templated from the same computer files.  If they were a brand new company with no relation to Emerald wouldn't they have contracts in different style? Seems very fishy. Like whoever is in charge of the operation made one company look bankrupt (so its very difficult to get any money back from them ) and started a fresh company. The local lawyer we saw said that kind of situation is very common in Thailand and is a delay tactic. The owner of the land keeps changing whilst a project is built. He also told us at the previous Emerald building that was actually built (The Emerald Terrace), a lot of buyers did not actually get their apartments signed over to them despite it actually being built. In some ways that situation seems even more frustrating than having an unfinished/abandoned building. I guess its probably each apartment in the building was probably sold to several different buyers over several years.

 

Anyway I am weighing up options at the moment. Signing another contract with a new company and cancelling the original contract seems very risky. Using lawyers seems quite likely to be throwing more money away. its a tricky situation. 

[KP67]

I just returned from Phuket and also met with Chivalry.  I have not seen their proposed replacement contract yet but I will be very cautious in signing.  However, they are working and making progress.  I do not believe they would be spending the money to proceed if they did not intend to complete the work, which is the best chance for a positive outcome.  Otherwise the whole thing will be a total loss as the chance of recovering through the court in next to zero.

[Addoil Jessie]

Hi all, my relatives bought Citylife project as well. They received the new contracts from Chivalry two weeks ago, I also wants to get more information from this forum. 

[Chasstar325]

Please don’t sign!

Seize the property.

 

ketroj created another fake company.

 

he just wants to steal more money and delay

[Mohd]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this Forum. My wife and I have also gone through the Emerald scam, in 2014 and already put so much money for a property in Nirvana project. I'm strongly suggesting that we moved this case to the media (see this: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34346620). I also lodged my case to 

Agency's name : the  Bureau Tourism Safety and Security Standards, Ministry of Tourism and Sports.

Contact Number: +662 356 0650 / Fax: +662 356 0655

E-mail Address:[email protected]

 

I suggest for people with cases similar to us that we work closely and collectively. Thanks