On January 1, 2025, the Department of Business Development (DBD) in Thailand’s Ministry of Commerce implemented new stringent corporate registration screening measures in collaboration with several other government agencies to prevent entities from opening corporate mule accounts to commit criminal activities in Thailand.

The DBD’s Order of the Office of Central Company and Partnership Registration No. 3/2024 stipulates a new method for registering the establishment of partnerships and limited companies for people who have been involved in underlying crimes or who are owners of bank accounts that are being used for underlying crime, as per the notification of the Anti-Online Scam Operation Center (AOC) to the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO) and the collated AMLO list of such persons.

The order establishes the following key requirements:

• Managing partners and directors of partnerships and limited companies, respectively, whose names have been listed by the AMLO as a person who is involved in an underlying offense, or as the owner of a bank account being used for the underlying offense, must appear before the registrar in person.
• The concerned persons cited on the AMLO list must provide valid documentation of their identity to the DBD registrar (e.g., national identification card, government official identification card, government or state enterprise employee identification card, alien identification card, passport, document used in lieu of a travel document, or other similar documents with photo identification).

This collaboration between the DBD and various relevant government agencies aims to eradicate the problem of fraudsters using mule accounts set up under legally established entities to deceive the public. It also seeks to enhance checks and screening of corporate mule accounts that are used to carry out criminal activities such as money laundering or cybercrime. These actions are part of the Thai government’s broader policy to suppress economic crimes.

For more details about the new DBD regulations, or on any aspect of business registration in Thailand, please contact Penrurk Petchmani at [email protected].