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Thai Police Raid 600-Million-Baht Tyre Factory, Arrest Chinese Fugitive Wanted for Corruption and His Son
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
Thai police raided a tyre business's factory and office premises in Om Noi subdistrict, Samut Sakhon province, on the morning of Wednesday, September 16, arresting a 37-year-old man along with his 19-year-old son, a Thai woman and a Thai driver — four people in total. Police allege the man is actually a Chinese national wanted by Chinese authorities in a corruption case, who for more than a decade held a Myanmar passport and lived in Thailand under the name "Myo", while arranging for Thai nationals to hold shares as nominees so he could secretly run a tyre business valued at more than 600 million baht, allegedly laundering money over a long period and violating Thailand's Foreign Business Act. The case is the latest in a series of recent Thai police operations targeting foreigners who use Thai nominees to skirt restrictions on foreign investment.
According to Thai media citing police sources, the operation was led by Deputy National Police Chief Pol Gen Samran Nuanma and targeted the factory and office premises of the tyre company involved. Besides the Chinese man, officers also detained his 19-year-old son, Thanadon; a Thai woman, Napha Jachi, who was registered as the son's "Thai mother"; and a Thai company driver accused of acting as a nominee shareholder. Police said the raid followed a period of covert investigation and evidence-gathering, and that on the day of the operation multiple teams simultaneously searched the factory, offices and the suspects' residences, seizing account books, company registration documents and financial transaction records as evidence. All four have been taken in for questioning, and the case remains under further investigation.
Investigators found that the man known as "Myo" entered Thailand in 2013 on a Myanmar passport and had since lived in the country under a Myanmar identity without arousing suspicion. Thai police, working with Chinese counterparts, later confirmed his true identity as a Chinese national who had been implicated in a corruption case linked to a local government project in China, and who is now wanted by police in Shandong province. Police allege that while a fugitive in Thailand, he continuously moved funds into the country and laundered them over a period of more than a decade, using land purchases and the expansion of tyre manufacturing and trading operations to gradually convert funds of suspicious origin into seemingly legitimate business assets.
Investigators said the man used several Thai nationals as nominee shareholders to set up three companies in Samut Sakhon province, with combined registered capital of about 191 million baht, while actual management control and profits remained in his own hands. The companies held seven land plots totaling roughly 28 rai, and together with the tyre manufacturing plant, machinery and related assets, the total value exceeded 600 million baht. Under Thailand's Foreign Business Act, companies engaged in land-related activities and certain manufacturing or service businesses must have Thai shareholders holding at least 51 percent of shares, and foreigners are barred from actually controlling management decisions. Police said the shareholding structure in this case amounted to nothing more than using Thai names for registration purposes to evade that ownership threshold — a textbook example of an illegal "front nominee" arrangement.
More strikingly, police allege that the man's 19-year-old son, Thanadon, used the birth certificate of a deceased child to fraudulently obtain a Thai national ID card, then used his resulting "Thai citizen" status to hold and receive transferred shares in part of the tyre business. Police said the father had arranged for his son to obtain Thai nationality this way some time earlier, so that assets that should have been subject to foreign-investment restrictions could later be transferred or inherited, on paper, in the name of a "Thai national," evading regulatory scrutiny and concealing the true origin of the assets and the identity of who actually controlled them. The case therefore involves not only money laundering and illegal nominee business operations, but also document forgery and false civil registration, making it more complex than a typical nominee case.
The Chinese man and his son now both face charges under Thailand's Foreign Business Act, the Immigration Act, and civil registration-related laws, covering illegal operation of a restricted business by a foreigner, the unlawful possession or use of Thai identification documents, and falsifying civil registration records. The two Thai nominees — Napha, registered as the son's "Thai mother," and the driver who allegedly served as a nominee shareholder — are also under investigation for allegedly helping a foreigner operate a business illegally and providing false shareholder information. If convicted, both the nominees and the foreign national who actually controlled the business could face fines and imprisonment, while the companies, land and factory tied to the case could also be frozen or forfeited by Thai authorities.
Thai media also reported that this is not the man's first criminal case. He was previously accused of assaulting a Chinese female employee in July 2021 — beating her, destroying property, forcing her to sign an acknowledgment of debt worth 15 million baht, and subjecting her to torture that reportedly included simulated drowning and burning. Thailand's Court of Appeal sentenced him to two years and ten months in prison over that case, which remains pending before the Supreme Court with no final ruling yet issued. Analysts say that when viewed alongside this earlier violent case, the newly exposed money-laundering and nominee scheme further illustrates a pattern of the man carrying out illegal activity in Thailand over an extended period while using a false nationality to evade accountability.
In recent years, Thai police have stepped up their crackdown on foreigners using Thai nominees to circumvent restrictions on foreign investment, running targeted operations against companies and properties suspected of involving Chinese-linked nominees. Thai police and the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) have previously raided similar cases in Chiang Mai, Pattaya and Bangkok: one Chiang Mai nominee case involved villas and land worth more than 633 million baht, another nominee-network probe led to the arrest of 21 Chinese and 51 Thai suspects in a single operation, and nominee property networks in Pattaya and Bangkok have been linked to dozens of luxury homes worth from tens of millions to more than a hundred million baht. Analysts say such cases reflect how some Chinese fugitives and holders of capital have sought to use Thailand's relatively open business and property environment to conceal assets and evade justice at home, and also point to the considerable scale of the foreign-nominee problem within Thailand.
Cross-border economic crime cases of this kind have also pushed Thai and Chinese authorities to deepen cooperation on extradition and joint law enforcement, with the two sides having previously worked together on several occasions to crack down on money-laundering networks run by Chinese fugitives in Thailand, as well as cases involving illegal cryptocurrency mining and the laundering of proceeds from telecom fraud operations. As for this case, Thai police have not yet publicly outlined the next legal steps for the Chinese man and his son, including whether extradition proceedings will be pursued or how the companies and assets involved will be handled — details that are expected to be released by police and prosecutors in due course. As of this report, the investigation into the Samut Sakhon tyre factory case remains ongoing, with Thai police saying they will continue tracing the flow of funds to determine whether additional nominee companies or related assets have yet to be uncovered.
