Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce, Suphajee Suthumpun, has confirmed the first concrete outcome figure since the government widened its crackdown on foreign nominee businesses — a drop Zagdim previously reported on, when Thai authorities said they were targeting 6,551 companies flagged as at risk. Speaking on the Ministry of Commerce’s regular “Q&A with the Ministry of Commerce” Facebook series, Suphajee said newly registered high-risk entities fell to 141 between August 1 and 20, 2026, from 561 in the same period last year — a drop of 420 entities, or close to 75%. She clarified that the figure applies specifically to new registrations in the nominee-risk category, not to all nominee arrangements already operating in Thailand.
Foreign investors and business owners already established in Thailand, and anyone still weighing a nominee-structure setup, are the ones most directly affected. The ministry says it is now enforcing on two fronts. Before registration, it has tightened shareholder and controller checks, cross-referencing data on roughly 13 million State Welfare Card holders and about 98,000 suspected mule accounts against one million juristic-person records. After registration, the Ministry of Commerce is working with 23 partner agencies to review existing companies — more than 50,000 cases flagged as at-risk have been forwarded for further checks, alongside on-site inspections across 46 areas in 13 provinces. Four new orders and two notifications have been issued to reinforce measures against nominee arrangements and mule accounts.
Separately, Thailand’s Department of Business Development has extended its scrutiny beyond initial company registration: businesses that later change their shareholders, directors or authorised signatories now also face checks. Companies with foreign investors or foreign authorised signatories must submit a written explanation of the investment plus three months of bank statements verifying the source of funds and the investor’s financial capacity. The department is also linking its database with the Land Department to strengthen checks on suspected nominee land ownership, and cross-verifying shareholder identities against the civil registration database.
For scale, the government says Thailand has more than one million active legal entities, including 119,116 companies with foreign shareholding of up to 49.99% — a figure officials stress is used only for risk assessment, not as an implication of wrongdoing, with investigations conducted case by case. Suphajee said the ministry’s goal is to prevent the registration system from being misused while making sure businesses operating honestly can continue to compete fairly.
References
The Thaiger – Thailand nominee crackdown cuts new filings by 75%
