ThaiMythbuster · @thaimythbuster
26th Jul 2022 from TwitLonger
Loan Sharks are harassing factory owner sand family over workers’ debts
Thailand’s police revealed that some money lending rackets are charging interest at up to 60% per month on loans. Rising household debt, coupled with soaring inflation, has become one of Thailand’s most chronic problems. This coupled with weeks of no income due to the Pandemic has created a major problem for many low-income Thais.
A crackdown across the country’s northeastern provinces led by top police officer General Surachate Hakparn urged anyone in the kingdom who finds themselves under duress from loan sharks not to hesitate to call in the police. The Anti-Money Laundering Office is targeting kingpins directing smashed illegal money lending networks. Also, the Revenue Department and the Anti-Money Laundering Office were initiating action against the heads of the networks to audit their finances and to seize assets believed to be the proceeds of illegal activity.
Many people in Thailand have fallen by the wayside of traditional banking arrangements and have therefore developed poor credit scores. Or people who have never been able to obtain banking facilities at all, turn to street moneylenders and a world that, in Thailand, has got more sinister over the last ten years.
Even Factories owners targeted
Loan sharks are being operated by sophisticated gangs from Malaysia, Korea and across Thailand. They will stop at nothing to get back bad debts. This week it was reported that loan sharks across Vietnam have resorted to new tactics, commercial harassment at businesses and factories. Predatory loan sharks there are now harassing the employers of workers who've defaulted on payments, threatening destructive action against their business as well as relatives. As an example, the hotline at HCMC logistics firm Long Rich Vietnam Co. Ltd has been ringing almost all day. The callers are loan sharks, demanding that the company cooperates and "hands over" workers who have borrowed money from them.
The usurers threaten that if the company, fails to cooperate, they will publicize harmful information about the company on social media or send gangsters over to damage its factory. The constant calling, starting early in the morning and going on until late in the night, makes it impossible for the company to receive calls from their customers or partners. And this is not all. The loan sharks also call company officials, including union heads and those working in its administrative office on their cell phones, making the same demands and threats. Long Rich Vietnam and Pouyuen Vietnam have not been able to hire new employees because their recruitment hotlines have also been disrupted by loan sharks. This commercial harassment is also starting to spread across SE Asia.
What can governments do?
Apart from increasing the number of police and staff at the Anti-Money Laundering Offices, it would seem it is up to the banking system to act quickly to help these low-income workers. If the banks can offer low-interest loans without any major background checks, then many would not need to go to these loan sharks in the first place. Meanwhile, the loan shark gangs are making life miserable for the debtors and their employers and families.