Thailand smashes coconut-profiteering web led by Chinese firms
These firms used Thai nominees to control the coconut sector and resell the fruit by as much as 25 times the price paid to farmers
The probe, launched across western agricultural provinces where the nam hom coconut farms are based, reflects broader concerns about the exploitation of Thai fruit farmers by foreign businessmen who set prices and dictate market terms.
The CIB said those companies had crushed farmgate prices to as low as 2 baht a coconut but “exported them at 35–50 baht per fruit, reaping massive profits”.
Nominee businesses are a means for foreigners to illegally circumvent Thai majority ownership laws by installing Thai citizens as shareholders who act as puppets for the real owners.
The probe was prompted “by abnormally low coconut prices in Ratchaburi and surrounding provinces, which caused severe hardship for local farmers despite high demand in international markets”, the CIB said in a statement on social media on Tuesday.
“Investigators found that foreign investors [of Chinese nationality] had interfered with market mechanisms by using Thai citizens as ‘nominees’ to establish front companies and purchasing sheds.”