Legal amendments for pyramid fund schemes planned
Revisions would allow action to be taken against lower-ranking fraudsters as well as their bosses
Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat said on Monday that the planned revisions of the law to prevent the public from being deceived by pyramid-fund schemes would allow legal action against the low-level heads of such funds as well.
Julapun said the current law against pyramid fund schemes allowed the authorities to take action only against top-level bosses of the schemes’ networks.
Julapun said the planned amendments would also see the Finance Ministry replaced with the Justice Ministry as the enforcer of the law against pyramid-fund schemes.
“This is because the Finance Ministry is in charge of policies and therefore doesn’t have the tools for taking timely action against wrongdoers,” he explained.
He added that the planned amendments would also aim to create mechanisms to warn government agencies and the public before any pyramid-fund scheme could cause damage.
Julapun said Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra assigned him to take charge of reviving the current law to plug loopholes and prevent such schemes from causing damage to society.
The order comes in light of the scandal involving The iCon Group against which many people have filed complaints. The group is suspected of being a pyramid-fund scheme disguised as an MLM (multi-level marketing) business.
As of Saturday, 9,469 people had filed complaints against The iCon Group, registering damages worth 2.916 billion baht. Police have arrested 18 executives of the Group, who are being held at Bangkok Remand Prison pending charges in court.
Julapun said the first law to be revised would be the “Emergency Decree on Borrowings Regarded as Public Cheating and Fraud, B.E. 2527”, enacted 40 years ago when many people fell victim to the Mae Chamoy pyramid fund scheme.
“It has been enforced for 40 years without revision but the patterns of pyramid fund schemes have changed due to new technologies so the old law cannot catch up with new tricks. The law has to be flexible enough to cope with these new tricks,” Julapun said.
He said three other laws requiring revision are:
- Act on direct sales and direct marketing of BE 2545 (2002)
- Computer Crime Act of BE 2560 (2017)
- Anti-Money Laundering Act of BE 2542 (1999).
