Anti-Money Laundering Law of Thailand

• Main Authors: Somrudee Kosanan, 胡立貞
• Other Authors: Huang-Yu Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/92486424144605206406

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 法律學研究所 === 102 === The motive behind Thailand’s Anti-Money Laundering Act of 1999 is the prevention of drug-related crimes. Drugs and crime are rampant in Thailand. Despite the development of drug-related crime control laws, such as the “Act on Measures for the Suppression of Offenders in an Offence Relating to Narcotics B.E. 2534” in 1991, in practice, they have not been effective. Thailand’s criminal cases related to trafficking and transport of drugs remain unabated. The reasons for this fearlessness is that evidence for investigating drug-related crimes is hard to find, many drug partners have not been arrested, and drug syndicate leaders are still fearlessly at large. Additionally, traffickers continue to put profit and property into their drug trafficking syndicate to support its operation. In order to put a stop to the rampant drug-related crimes, the Thai government believes more effective laws to contain drug-related crimes should be developed, while empowering the law enforcement powers of the police and prosecutors. Additionally, the new law for confiscating property should be revised to allow the government to confiscate profits made by traffickers from drug trafficking and to disable traffickers from drug trafficking that harms the society. In view of this, the Thai government set up “Anti-Money Laundering B.E. 2542” in 1999 to seize and confiscate dirty money at an extended level. Furthermore, the aim of the Thai government is to develop financial services industry standards, Know Your Customers policies, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing guidelines. The Thailand’s Anti-Money Laundering Act was developed in reference to the U.S. “in rem forfeiture” procedures, through which money laundering cases are divided into two parts: criminal cases and civil cases. Criminal cases are intended to punish money-laundering offenses; civil cases are intended to declare the forfeiture of property related to crime and prevent perpetrators from committing crimes to acquire illegal interests and use them for the next crime. Thailand’s Anti-Money Laundering Act is applied in civil lawsuits for property forfeiture procedures. The reason for adopting this system is that the alleged facts pertain to property, and property owners should be most familiar with these facts, compared to the police and prosecutors. Hence, the obligation of providing proof is transferred to the defendant to better be able to achieve effective confiscation of property. This way, the obligation of the prosecutor is to prove to the civil court whether the defendant’s act is a serious crime or money laundering crime. As far as whether property comes from criminal acts is concerned, there is no need to provide 100% authenticity. Although this system lessens the burden of proof for the police and prosecutors, the burden of proof is shifted to the defendant for him to prove his property has nothing to do with crime. This will in turn achieve prompt and effective confiscation of criminal property. However, this system is also suspected of being in violation of the presumption of innocence and no self-incrimination. Additionally, it may be against people’s right to a fair trial and be an infringement of the people’s property rights.