The atmosphere of Pattaya is now coming to Phuket with gangs coming from Eastern Europe.

It would be good to get riddance of all foreigners setting up businesses in Phuket with Thai nominees as many of them are unwanted as well in their home country.

Too many foreigners in Phuket use Thai nominees to own and manage at 100% the Thai companies at the expense of properly registered Thai companies.

Many companies operated by foreigners are selling tours, diving and yachting charters or are investing in the real estate and use PayPal for payments to avoid paying taxes in Thailand by diverting the money overseas.

Posted by Whistle-Blower on December 19, 2014 20:18

WB

How can you twist this case of a kidnapping for ransom by a Thai gang into something about eastern european criminal gangs and, wait for it, your favourite topic of nominees and foreigners in the diving industry? Amazing. I'm sure you could find a reason to get on your pet topic in the comment section of an article about a flower exhibition or something..

Posted by christian on December 20, 2014 07:00

I do not distort the facts as you may know, most of Eastern Europeans (Russian, Ukrainians, etc... ) are investing a lot of money in Pattaya, Koh Samui and Phuket and do not trust at all in the Thais as business partners; so they use Thai nominees to justify the compulsory 51% of Thai shareholders but they own and control the companies at 100%.
Even for women, few have Thai wifes but most of them prefer to bring Eastern women.
I challenge you to present me a true Thai investors in their companies with proof of payment of the 51% of total company assets...
When you deal with that Russian operated Thai companies, never you will see the Thai director/manager and you will deal only with Russian guys.
for the last, many of those companies are laundering businesses for russian tax-evaders or Russian mafia gangs.
Let go read newspapers online from Pattaya and you will read a lot of stories about it.
At the end, NCPA and the government is changing the law about Thai companies and shareholders in order to avoid Thai nominees but it will not be ready before March-April 2015 according from different sources.

Posted by Whistle-Blower on December 20, 2014 09:15

WB

This article is about a THAI gang that kidnapped a Ukrainian..Has got absolutely NOTHING to do with russian, eastern european or foreign gangs using nominees to set up diving companies. Or any company for that matter.

Posted by christian on December 20, 2014 10:57

@Whistle-Blower - What's the connection? The fact that the couple happens to be Ukranian? If the couple had been British or American would you have jumped to the same conclusion? Or maybe you're just commenting on the wrong article....

Posted by concerned in karon on December 20, 2014 11:38

@WB

What are you talking about!? I have a Thai company with fully paid up capital and prove that both Thai and foreign investors have paid for their respective share proportion! I understand that Ed appreciates people actually contributing "value" to these online discussions. Repeatdely posting this boring generalising nominee staff all over the internet has no value whatsoever.

Posted by James on December 20, 2014 13:40

I'm with Whistle Blower on this one. It's always Russians or other Eastern Europeans in these kidnapping and random stories. Where there is smoke there's fire.

Posted by Matt on December 20, 2014 15:14

Hmm... pretty sure this is ultimately going to be determined to be a big misunderstanding.

Posted by Ed Sanders on December 20, 2014 16:19

It has been reported that the 5 guys are soldiers, the army has both good and bad people like every organization I presume.

Posted by Sir Jones on December 21, 2014 04:42