Prosecution Looms Over Deceased French Woman's Fortune

[Bangkok Barry]

Who made this will public? If it was the maid, then she was very naive if she thought anyone would let her keep the money.

[bradiston]

1 hour ago, Jenkins9039 said:

Not really.

 

Under Thai law, if you divorce your wife you / she gets 50% each.

Under Thai law - In court. The justice system here follows the law... no whims of a Thai in the court room... there's three judges for that reason.

 

Under Thai law if you use a company, it's 49% ownership opposed to 51%.

What use is 50% of a house?

[bradiston]

8 minutes ago, Cabradelmar said:

Cautionary take for all the foreigners who think they can get around a hard and fast rule that foreigners can't own land in Thailand. Without a proper (good) lawyer, and checking all the boxes, with one misstep, your entire estate gets through into limbo, or worse, lost/taken from you.

A house is not the same as the land it's built on.

[xylophone]

11 minutes ago, Cabradelmar said:

Cautionary take for all the foreigners who think they can get around a hard and fast rule that foreigners can't own land in Thailand. Without a proper (good) lawyer, and checking all the boxes, with one misstep, your entire estate gets through into limbo, or worse, lost/taken from you.

Even with a "proper/good lawyer" things are not always as they seem, as a friend of mine found out when he lost his Villa because the Thai lawyer resold it in his absence, and when he took the lawyer to court, the court ruling was that because my friend had purchased the Villa through the nominee route, then he had broken the law and the whole deal was nullified and he got nothing.
 

[ourmanflint]

Isn't almost all of the property built over past 25 years on Samui and Phangan etc all done with these proxy Thai shareholder schemes? Why did lawyers and sellers push it if it was not legal?

[Cabradelmar]

5 minutes ago, bradiston said:

A house is not the same as the land it's built on.

They are saying it was built illegally...on either land she did not own or did not have rights to build on. It's a land issue.

[foreverlomsak]

She left her estate to her Thai maid, and panic has set in.

Wonder what would have happed if she'd left it to a foreign national who doesn't reside here.

[Cabradelmar]

7 minutes ago, xylophone said:

Even with a "proper/good lawyer" things are not always as they seem, as a friend of mine found out when he lost his Villa because the Thai lawyer resold it in his absence, and when he took the lawyer to court, the court ruling was that because my friend had purchased the Villa through the nominee route, then he had broken the law and the whole deal was nullified and he got nothing.
 

Good is indeed relative. And using nominees is like skating on this ice.

[bradiston]

9 minutes ago, bradiston said:

A house is not the same as the land it's built on.

"The ฿30 million villa, central to this saga, has been declared legally built. However, the company might have violated the law by employing proxy Thai shareholders. "

 

The house was legally built, meaning, presumably, the building permit was in order and the structure met the required building regs. If they used proxy shareholders to buy the land, that's a different matter. But look at land ownership in Thailand. "Foreign ownership" is illegal. But Thai lawyers never get prosecuted for enabling it.

[jaideedave]

2 hours ago, proton said:

This can't be true as know it all's are always telling us buying a house via the company route with Thai shareholders owning 51% is legal. Until you die it seems then the greedy rats decide it's not and want to take it away from your estate.

Correct,P...the so called officials are rubbing their hands together in the hopes of getting their greasy mitts on some of this dough. There's a lesson here for all those folks we've known over the years that said the company route was the best and easiest...mmm

Ever since Swiss Davey boy f,d up all eyes are on the pie.There's potentially billions in untapped resources if they dig a little deeper.

[jaideedave]

25 minutes ago, ourmanflint said:

Isn't almost all of the property built over past 25 years on Samui and Phangan etc all done with these proxy Thai shareholder schemes? Why did lawyers and sellers push it if it was not legal?

Greed, and knowing that if the sh_te hit the fan they would benefit.

[scubascuba3]

how many of you guys out there have proxy thai shareholders in your illegal company name house or condo?

 

I might do a poll 

[rickray]

2 hours ago, Jenkins9039 said:

Not really.

 

Under Thai law, if you divorce your wife you / she gets 50% each.

Under Thai law - In court. The justice system here follows the law... no whims of a Thai in the court room... there's three judges for that reason.

 

Under Thai law if you use a company, it's 49% ownership opposed to 51%.

Not true. I divorced my Thai wife while in Thailand, appearing before a Thai judge. She got nothing, even though the car was in her name.

[bristolgeoff]

It seems to me the maid was going to benefit,now it seems others wanting a share are doing the dirty tricks to stop her.the maid was thai I assume so now they want to rob her not nice

[nobodysfriend]

3 hours ago, proton said:

This can't be true as know it all's are always telling us buying a house via the company route with Thai shareholders owning 51% is legal.

 

It is ( was ) tolerated , never legal .

The ' company way " is nothing but a

mousetrap .

[thairookie]

3 hours ago, proton said:

This can't be true as know it all's are always telling us buying a house via the company route with Thai shareholders owning 51% is legal. Until you die it seems then the greedy rats decide it's not and want to take it away from your estate.

 

The Lawyer's Council of Thailand should round up all these lawyers who helped with registering the companies.

[ukrules]

1 hour ago, Excogitator said:

Another act of self-sabotage by Thai authorities in the name of greed.

For sure, this will kill many real estate projects - but rightly so.

 

Setting up a company with a 51% Thai ownership with a Thai you don't know is not something that any serious person with any experience in business would do - ever. It's a giant red flag.

 

 

[Jimjim1]

2 hours ago, Chris Daley said:

Aunty Tim just ruined her families' lives forever.  Enjoy your poverty.

How do you work that out?

It strikes me that aunty Tim is the innocent person in this, if she had no action in the death of her employer and there is no evidence of any then she is guilty of only one thing, being the innocent recipient of a legally drawn up will in her favour by her doting employer one in which she may have known nothing about.

 

As for the speculation about illegal activities regarding proxy investors it could be that aunty Tim is the proxy assuming she is Thai and therefore everything is legal, so perhaps it is time to stop the speculation and sour remarks against her until at least if you are really interested in the outcome we know more about the truth of it.

 

One thing we can all be assured of, if you work hard all your life and come to Thailand to buy property that you will never own but put in all the money for it, one firmly places oneself in the realm of the buffalo, especially when they ( the Thais ) can go to your country and 100% own any property and land they buy.

[off road pat]

3 hours ago, Chris Daley said:

Aunty Tim just ruined her families' lives forever.  Enjoy your poverty.

Nah,...this story is far from finished yet,....prepare for some long entertainment.

[Phuket Pete]

Let's hope this adverse publicity doesn't deter people from investing in the Thai property market !

Talk about 'kill the goose that lays the golden egg' !  🤣🤣.

 

[rwill]

Without knowing the whole story.  Were any of the company's assests left the the Thai owners?  Did she will everything to the maid?  It would seem if so the other owner(s) of the company would have claims to its assests too.

[scubascuba3]

30 minutes ago, thairookie said:

 

The Lawyer's Council of Thailand should round up all these lawyers who helped with registering the companies.

Yes, arrest those lawyers and dirty farang who buy properties in thai company and seize those properties for good measure 

[sabai-dee-man]

2 hours ago, Expat Tom said:

I have been here for many years. Long ago, I owned 2 condos in Thailand. Today I rent. Now, I would never invest one baht in this country.

 

When i first arrived 25 years ago, a friend said "never invest anything here you can't afford to lose". Every single transaction I make to this day, I bear his advice in mind.

[scorecard]

5 hours ago, worgeordie said:

Looks like "Aunty Tim" is going to end up with next to nowt , 

 

regards Worgeordie

 

A big assumption on your part, let's hope that's not true.

[geisha]

Just read Wikipedias Corruption in Thailand. There’s no hope , the whole country is crooked. 

[ronster]

They best take most of the villas away in samui then , as very few of the new builds are owned by a Thai person alone I'm sure  🙄🙈

[barrybike]

This is a good lesson to anyone with property that has 51% Thai shareholding on it , I  wonder if she left everything to her own relation like a French person living in France would  the outcome be the same !! 

[Colabamumbai]

As I said before join the lineup, could be some getting killed. 

[worgeordie]

14 minutes ago, scorecard said:

 

A big assumption on your part, let's hope that's not true.

An assumption ,yes but not so big , and I too hope it's not true  ....but .

 

regards worgeordie

[Sydebolle]

Well, it was only a matter of time until the corrupt vultures were waiting in the wings. Wondering what is next; as Thailand's medieval property ownership laws - completely outdated - are a joke, they have been bent by hundreds of thousands of houses sold to non-Thais. 

One of Thailand's largest department store chains own trillions of Baht in property all over Europe, La Rinascente in Italy, Globus in Switzerland, Kaufhof in Germany and many more. Thaksin seems to sit on a shack or two in England and so does the Red Bull empire. 

If the property in question in Samui was built legally, then the building permit was granted to a Thai (juristic) person which applied correctly for the conformity of the property. So in other words, you cannot enrich yourself with legal fees and construction costs of 30 million Baht on one side and, once a shareholder and possible director of the Thai (juristic) person dies, call the whole thing off - be VERY, VERY, VERY careful, how you deal with this. This can backfire ENORMOUSLY wipe out trillions of property value all over the sacred land of the semi-divine.

In closing, I am not aware, that a single squaremetre of land was rolled together, stuffed into a duffle bag and flown out of the land as luggage of a dirty farang ............ so what's the phobia on this now?