Thai Work Permit | Company Limited

Thai Work Permit | Company Limited

Thai work permit

                   Thai Law Siam Firm | There are some businesses where there are many shareholders and the managing directors do the way they want and not care about the other shareholders and even can embezzle the company’s money away to his own and then the minority shareholder submit the case to the court against them, why the company still run the business if you do this way the court will terminate your case and say that the company still running the business you have to use the limited partnership,company limited law and Thai work permit to sue them, on that law you cannot request for any money back from the company or the managing director if you do not plan to close the company and share the money together. If the company keep running the business the way to do is the management way like arrange to set up the meeting and use the resolution of the meeting to do something on that purpose, so why we are minority we never have the chance to vote against the majority so then please be careful about if you run the business as the partnership of someone if you cannot come to be majority of the company you have to make sure that those person that you join with them they are good person, you can trust them, you can keep your investment with them and this is the business way. In every detail in the court they have the laws to support, you have to make sure that your lawyer understands about that law include Thai work permit very well or not. And the commercial law for the company setup or the company changing is the very specialized for the experienced lawyer only to understand. If you want to use someone you have to question them you have to check them they got the experience on this thing or not because there are a lot of details on that purpose it not seem to be every lawyer can make it. Example a business lawyer because They also have known about Thai work permit.

               Lawyer comment: not so many lawyer spend the time to set up company by Thai work permit knowledge  and especially the business for the foreigner, some of the person never set up the company for the foreigner at all they don’t know how to set up the preference and ordinary share, they don’t know how the nominee shareholder work and without Thai work permit knowledge , that is why they cannot do proper to request the money back for you. You will waste the time in the court waste the money for the court fee and waste the money for the lawyer fee. Actually one that we have the problem with the managing director or the majority shareholder we have enough problem, don’t do the thing like create more problem after you can get the chance to release yourself of that company and get return the money back from that company. On my experience one that I take care of the foreigner who come to be the victim in the company with the Thai shareholder or with other foreign shareholders we recommend them to start the case both civil to request for the money and criminal to enforce the company to return back the company. If not they can get imprisonment or pay fine

Law firm Thailand | IT in Law

Law firm Thailand | IT in Law 

Law firm Thailand

                     Law firm in Thailand | Recently we took care of a case for a job recruitment company; who were being sued for wrongful termination of one of their human resource workers. The company had found that this employee, whose job was using the company website to advertise job positions, had linked his own email to the advertisement. Thus he would bring any prospective applicants to the company himself and be paid a finder’s fee each time. After the company terminated the employee he came back to sue the company for unfair termination, no severance payment and no advance notice of termination. From the first day in court the employee did not accept that he did anything wrong and he challenged us to find the proof.

law firm thailand

                    At our law firm now we have our own IT section which we used to find out what that man did in the past. We contacted the website provider to ask for details and records from the advertising post such as date, time, user account, account owner and IP address. By the time we started the case the post had already expired so we needed to get the account details from the webmaster. After collecting all of the information we had the proof that the terminated employee was the one who set up the advertisement. On this case we used a lot of high technology and high end software and there was a lot of hard work put in to gather the evidence for this case.

Law firm Thailand

                     Because of his challenge of finding proof we knew that there was evidence of his crime somewhere out there, the hard part was finding it. Regarding this if you are a defendant in court please don’t say anything like this to the plaintiff, it will give you a bad image, lose reputation and the plaintiff lawyer will know that he can succeed and prove your guilt. At the end of the story you will lose the case and you can find yourself in a lot of trouble. If you commit any wrongful actions please understand that you should try to compromise when you can regarding your case. Please do not be arrogant like in the story above thinking that you can hide everything away from the other party, in Thailand we have the saying “The criminal will always hide the evidence”. Don’t make yourself up to be a good person if you are not, try to make yourself as small as possible during negotiations as to help any wrongful actions slide by if they can. If you have your own case or any questions regarding law in Thailand please feel free to write in to us and we will answer any questions or concern.

Thai immigration | Immigration’s Authority to Deport

Immigration’s Authority to Deport

Thai immigration

                                   Some time ago I had come across a foreign man who had contacted me as he was in the process of being deported back to his country of origin. He had explained to me that he had gotten in trouble over a case of cheating money, which he was found guilty of and an arrest warrant had just been issued back in his home country. As such when the Thai immigration office discovered this they immediately detained him giving him forty eight hours to appeal his deportation, if an appeal was not lodged immediately he was effectively just waiting for his flight home.
The immigration authority here in Thailand has the power to detain an individual who is not allowed into the Kingdom for forty eight hours from his or her arrival at their offices, with a possible extension to no more than seven days if the circumstances require it. Acting quickly we appealed to the Immigration Minister allowing us to buy more time, as the foreign man’s deportation must be delayed until the appeal is processed and the deportation order is made by the Minister. The order of the Minister is final and is the last chance of avoiding being sent back to your home country.
If an order does not arrive to the immigration officer handling the case in the period of seven days, then it is considered that the Minister has declared the individual is not forbidden from entering the Kingdom of Thailand. Even if this is not the case the legal proceedings that are necessary after the appeal will take a long time to process such as a period of up to one or two months. As such the individual being charged can then post bail and be free to sort out his affairs and plan ahead instead of being rushed back in the original two day period. 


Our Comment: As a foreigner here in Thailand if a situation like this happens to you please be aware that you will be at the mercy of the Thai Immigration office. As they have the power to consider your case for themselves, they will never need to check your case with any courts or check whether you are guilty or not. This is one kind of tool that foreigners who have problems with each other use to achieve their ends; by charging the other party in the original country of that person, the courts will then issue the necessary warrant of arrest which can be sent via Interpol through to the Immigration Authority of Thailand giving the order to deport that individual back to face charges or punishment.
This gives the Immigration office complete power to send them back on the basis that whoever is right or wrong, guilty or innocent will need to prove it themselves in the court of their own country. If all else fails and you are deported back home the Immigration office will also blacklist you making it difficult to return to the Kingdom after your case is resolved, even if you are found innocent. But it does not mean that you will not have any chance at all as you are still able to submit your case to the Immigration office to consider again. If you have your own case or any questions regarding law here in Thailand please feel free to write in to us and we will answer any questions or concerns in this column.

Thai work permit | Employer Beware

            

Thai work permit

                      

                As a foreigner in Thailand you may choose to stay a long time or to spend your life here, if you choose to do so there are many who decide to go into business locally. Almost all of them haven’t known about Thai work permit.It is important when hiring any staff or employees to be careful and to make the right choices. Most Thai employees who work under Thai work permit will think that a foreign business owner is someone who is rich and wealthy even if this is not always the case. Quite recently in the news there was a big story about a wealthy Thai business man who was kidnapped and murdered by his personal driver, what followed was a large scale investigation and man hunt and it is a sad story.

The driver had dropped the business man off at his destination, he proceeded to pick up his accomplice who was armed with a gun and went back top pick up his employer. When the business man got into the car he was held at gunpoint and ordered to sign a check with a large amount of money of five million baht. After he had done this and they had the money, they kept him in hand restraints and kidnapped him. They are not certain when he was murdered but the car was eventually driven to the south of Thailand, they stripped his body of clothes and valuables then proceeded to bury his naked body as to avoid easy identification. This was a major crime case here in Thailand but does not stretch the imagination as much as it should in terms of crimes committed.

We worry that something similar like this can happen to others here especially to foreigners who are generally seen to be wealthy in general, though maybe not as extreme as the previous case there have been cases of blackmail or extortion with money being the key money before.

Lawyer comment: Whenever you are dealing with large amounts of money you should be secretive to protect yourself, other people such as employees should not be involved with such money if they cannot be trusted and you should know about Thai work permit. Thailand is a developing country and as such much of the population is poor and having the chance to obtaining large wealth quickly through illegal means is sometimes seen as the only way. There are ways to avoid this such as using an internet banking system or credit card, sometimes using cash money isn’t always the best idea. Times where you would have large amounts of money such as when you pay salaries can be done by direct bank transfer rather than cash in hand. It is easier and less dangerous when you don’t leave anything to chance, also showing signs of wealth such as expensive watches and jewelry at the wrong time can be a risk to your person.

When hiring new employees, follow Thai work permit you should try to protect yourself and look for honest hard working people if you can, it is always good for them to have a recommendation that you can trust as well as knowing their background. Criminal records can be checked be either the police or a layer if you are worried, there is also a way of obtaining one hundred percent proof of a criminal past and that is by fingerprint identification in Thailand. If you have your own case about Thai work permit or any questions regarding law inThailand please feel free to write in to us and we will answer any questions or concerns in this column.

Thai law Siam Firm | Preference Shares

Law Firm Thailand

For a foreign investor in Thailand, quite often 
they will get the advice from a lawyer or an audit firm to set up a company to do business here locally.A few people have known  lawfirm Thailand. A lawyer or an audit firm will suggest setting up a Thai company, the meaning of a Thai company is that you will have to have a majority of Thai shareholders and a majority of the shares held by Thai nationals. The maximum share percentage able to be held by a foreigner or foreign parties in a Thai company is forty-nine percent with a minimum Thai majority share of fifty-one percent. Many investors worry that they are the minority shareholder and will be in a weak position in case of any vote in the company. With doing business here there are many ways to go about this such as having the company become a juristic person, this requires the company to abide by rules and regulations according to Thai law but also has many benefits as well. One of the benefits of doing business as a company is that you are not required to pay any taxes if you’re not making a profit, our law firm Thailand also agrees that setting up a Thai company to run a business but we also have another idea to control the company.

To be in control of the company you must be appointed as managing director and be a shareholder with preference shares, to do this the company’s articles of association must declare that there are to be two types of shares; preference shares as well as ordinary shares. The preference shares must also be given importance over ordinary shares in the voting system such as one preference share to be equal to ten votes or one share to be equal to one hundred votes. As such a foreigner with a minority share you can have the majority vote in the company’s affairs in the foreseeable future; this ensures that Thai partners or other shareholders cannot act against your will with regards to the company. This is more protection than trust, we have to trust shareholders but being able to control the company is to be able to make sure that your investment and best interests are maintained.

Not many lawyers or audit firms and law firm Thailand understand this procedure and do not know how to set this up. They will try other ways to ensure control such as asking the Thai shareholder to sign an agreement to transfer the shares back to the foreign shareholder which is a blank form. This is a form of guarantee but I have handled many cases like this and quite often they will fight by stating that they are the owner of these shares and the paper that they have signed is a blank form. If the other party uses that form then they will charge them with a criminal charge of document forging, usually this type of case will come down to be a compromise with the foreigner paying the other shareholder to get his shares back.Our law firm Thailand understand that the money invested in the company is the foreign investor’s so we do not recommend you to go about this way and give anyone the chance to cheat you.

Law Firm Thailand

Lawyer comment: Every week I stress about the importance of protecting yourself in everything that you do, preference shares is a form of protection. It is the best way in company management as you will not have to compromise or ask for mercy as a minority, you are in charge of the company and your investment. Not many law firm Thailand or audit firms understand or know how to execute this process but we have extensive experience in this field. Also if you already have a company setup with only ordinary shares we cannot change the type of share to be the preference share. But we have a way around this, by increasing the capital of the company we can form new shares which can be converted to preference shares for use in the company. If you have your own case or any questions regarding law in Thailand please feel free to write in to us and we will answer any questions or concerns in this column.

Thai Law Siam Firm | Labour Case

                   As a foreigner here if you are an employer or an employee in a company you must follow the labour  law of Thailand. If you hire any employees you will have the chance to evaluate their performance for a period of one hundred and twenty days including weekends and holidays. During that period of time if you do not wish to have them continue to work with you and you plan to terminate them, then you will not need to pay any form of severance payment follow the labour  law of Thailand. But you are required to provide one months notice in advance to give them the time to find other work opportunities, so it is best for both parties if the day that you schedule their termination coincides with a pay day.

·      After the probation period of one hundred and twenty days is finished and they continue to be under your employ for up to one year any termination will require a one month severance payment along with one month’s notice of their termination.

·      For a period of one to three years three month’s severance payment must be made along with the mandatory one month notice.

·      Three to six years is six months’ severance and one month notice.

·      Six to ten years will require you to pay eight months of severance and one month notice and ten years or more will bring it up to ten months of severance with a one month notice. 

The only extension where this does not apply and you do not need to pay for any severance is if the employee chooses to resign or commits a serious criminal offence against the company such as fraud or embezzlement. Also if you warn them against doing something against the regulations of the company for more than two times then you will not need to pay them any severance upon termination. One other specified extension is if you are employed under a contract for a fixed period of time as an employee such as that of a private school, then you do not have the right for any severance at all follow the labour  law of Thailand but this is very special case.

If you are an employer and you wish to terminate any employee follow the labour  law of Thailand you have to do this through a written letter given to the said employee stating the reasons of termination with a severance payment or without a severance payment. This must be received acknowledged and signed by the employee in question but if they do not accept this then you may bring in a witness who is read the letter along with the employee enabling them to sign in their place, stating that the employee in question has refused to sign the letter. If you do not issue any termination letter, you will not be able to fight a case in court as they will only demand that you pay severance to the proper amount leaning in the favor of the employee. But if you do then you will only have to prove to the court that you had reason enough to terminate the employee without severance such as a criminal charge or a violation of company rules.

 Our comment: We have to confirm to you that all foreigners are treated equally under labour law of  Thailand, the same to Thai’s or people of other nationalities living here that get the same rights. It is only employees of private schools and fixed term contracts who do not have the same rights as everyone else and are treated unfairly by the labour system. At the moment we have a case like this at our firm and we are in the process of submitting a request to the Constitutional court to terminate this law and we believe that we should be successful in this process soon. I believe that if something exists that is unfair then everyone that is able should try to fix it. If you have your own case or any questions regarding in Thailand’s law please feel free to write in to us and we will answer any questions or concerns in this column.