Thais crack down on financial crime; Chinese suspects in focus

BANGKOK – Thailand is prosecuting more than 1,000 people, including over 250 Chinese nationals, on suspicion of financial crime including laundering money for online scam centers that have proliferated in the region, police said on Wednesday.

The arrests, part of a long-term campaign against financial crime, are a follow-up to a crackdown on illicit Russian businesses in the resort island of Phuket in May, the chief of the Central Investigation Bureau told a press conference.

“We are prosecuting 442 companies and 1,014 individuals,” said Police Lt. Gen. Jirapob Puridej, the chief of the police investigation agency.

Jirapob said Thailand supported legal investors but the police were going after the bosses behind illegal front companies committing financial crime.

“If we find you, we will prosecute you,” Jirapob said. “We will intensify our operations.”

Some of those detained in the sweep were involved with casinos and scam centers that have sprung up in Thailand’s neighbors, often in more lawless parts of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, police said.

Human rights groups and foreign law enforcement agencies have accused operators of the scam centers, who are often from China, of human trafficking and kidnapping, by luring people with job offers then forcing them to work at defrauding people online through various phony investment schemes.

Of the more than 1,000 people being prosecuted, 714 are Thai, 258 from China, 21 Malaysians, four Cambodians, four Vietnamese, three Germans, three British, two from Myanmar, two Japanese, and one from Singapore, the United States and Kazakhstan, police said.

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Deputy Minister of Commerce Napinthorn Srisanpang said officials from his ministry worked with police to investigate and search multiple targets across the country – including premises of companies suspected of money laundering and luxury homes of the accused.

An initial estimate of the cost of the crime was 3.6 billion baht (US$104 million), Napinthorn told the news conference, though he added that the overall damage could not be quantified.

“This destroys a country’s economy,” he said.

Police said they had coordinated their operation with the Chinese embassy.

Business laws are restrictive in Thailand and foreigners can not own the majority of shares in a venture or operate in certain sectors, such as crypto currencies.

Police added the Chinese suspects exploited legal loopholes, using retirement or student visas to stay in Thailand and employing Thai accounting companies and law firms to work around loopholes and establish so-called nominee companies to operate.

The director of the Department of Business Development, Auramon Supthaweethum, told the news conference that in addition to the prosecutions announced on Wednesday, authorities were scrutinizing 26,000 companies, especially those of Chinese people, as part of their campaign.

Before COVID-19, Thailand welcomed a record 40 million tourists, with Chinese accounting for more than a quarter of them, making them a driving force behind the Thai economy.

Edited by Taejun Kang.