Thai Companies

I have recently been following a rather interesting thread on land ownership and associated problems, which unfortunatley degenerated. However an interesting question arose in my mind which I thought could be constructively discussed.

As I understand things one may own a percentage of a company whilst the balance of the company shares have to be owned by a specific minimum number of Thais. Furthermore the percentage to be owned by the foreigner is less when the company is specificaly for holding land. (Someone told me that Americans are exempt this law - though I can't believe that.)

I guess that the percentages mentioned above can be easily established. However an interesting issue is the identity and connections of the Thai owners. I am led to believe that the authorities are checking various company papers as the same 7 Thais seem to be owners of many, many companies. I believe that the process is for them to sign their share documents over to the main foreign shareholder but not date the document. Thus the foreigner has in fact complete control of the company even to the extent of the shares of theThais. I have heard that this is in fact illegal and that the authorities are moving aginst this practice. What the penalties are I have no idea, but it does seem rather risky to trust such a system if the Thai authorities have the last say in the matter. I do have a friend who has a company which owns his hotel and the land upon which it stands. His wife, her parents and her brothers and sisters are the Thais who are the majority shareholders. So this is strictly legitimate. He went through many hours of questioning as did his wife seemingly to establish that he knew her and her family and that this was not just another ruse for him to fully own the company assets.

Does anyone have any definitive advice on either the structure of a company or the attitude of the authorities. Other peoples experiences would be very helpful.