The Department of Business Development (DBD) plans to probe 27,000 juristic persons next year as part of its crackdown on the use of Thai nominees by foreign businesses.
The department will look into a total of 26,830 juristic persons in tourism; real estate; hotels and resorts; transport and logistics; and e-commerce platforms and warehouses nationwide, said Auramon Supthaweethum, the department's director-general.
She said the crackdown follows complaints from local business operators and information supplied by relevant agencies.
The probe will include verifying the registration and financial credibility of Thai partners before they became the company’s juristic persons, she said.
It will look into the company’s shareholding structure, executives and their powers, voting rights and dividend payments, among others, she added.
The DBD will also set up an Intelligence Business Analytic System to analyse the behaviour of juristic persons and determine the risks of these entities being used as nominees, she said.
The system is expected to be operational in six months and will help the department better detect the use of nominees, she said.
She noted that the probe is not limited to these targets and that it will look into those facing complaints about practices that avoid full compliance with the Foreign Business Act.
As for this year's investigation, the DBD examined 26,019 juristic persons in four sectors — tourism, land and property trading, hotels and resorts, and transports and logistics.
Of these, 498 were singled out for intense scrutiny with 371 of them cleared of irregularities. Of the remaining, 64 were charged in connection with accounting irregularities and 63 were being investigated further, with four of them suspected of being used as nominees.