JUST WHY IS PROPERTY MAN SO ANGRY WITH THAIVISA.COM

The forthcoming trial of ThaiVisa boss George Andersson on fraud charges is likely to reveal that the owner of Thailand’s most popular website, well at least in term of hits, has been hiding large chunks of his income and putting it in banks in Hong Kong.

A home in Orchid Palm Homes 5

Not only that but that income is many times larger than the sum of US$30,000 which StickmanBangkok guessed was around US$30,000 a month.

Indeed it is a profitable business and why knock success even if a few short cuts were made on the way to the top.

Grahame Beecham – accepting a prize for Orchid Palm Villas

Well, Grahame Beecham who started Thai Visa Property company, a separate entity to ThaiVisa.com, but which promotes property on Thai Visa clearly does think that George (Jorge) Andersson, or Lars Jannson, whatever the Swede calls himself , has done more than cut corners but carried out outright fraud.

George had been trying for a long time to get into the lucrative property sector in Thailand, and what better vehicle did he have than ThaiVisa.com to promote property products.  

This was at a time when estate agents, or realtors, were being paid sums as high as 18 per cent to offload properties on foreigners at prices Thais would never buy.

Hence today many a foreigner’s ‘pad in paradise’ is a 20 square metre box room in a condo in Pattaya, with a view of an adjacent brick wall for which they have paid the equivalent of £20,000.

(They certainly will have if they bought into Drew Noyes’ National Housing Authority Keha Condos).

Beecham turned the plan down many times but eventually relented when shown the possible figures were shown to him in a bar in Hua Hin.

Beecham had sold the ThaiVisa boss a pool villa in Orchid Palm Homes 5 in Hua Hin where he was marketing director and agreed to spend his spare time, evenings and weekends, getting estate agents/relators on board. They would all split the profits between them.

Lars Jansson giving his home page as ThaiVisa.com – courtesy of Stickman

Beecham

Beecham put in hundreds of hours and thousands of kilometres going around estate agents in Thailand and business soon picked up.

Like the advertisers on ThaiVisa some of the partners were dodgy, including Hua Hin’s own notorious developer and realtor Alan MacDonald.

Nevertheless Beecham knew little of the shared links including lawyers and a Pacific Place suite in Bangkok with dodgy boiler room related people. He was a property salesman and knew his market.

It’s claimed he never took a penny out of ThaiVisa Property and watched hopelessly as cash was transferred to Hong Kong.

Beecham was actually Managing Director, but he resigned on a point of principal, or as he said to friends, on a point of ‘business ethics’ – which may have been a bad move.

The shares of the company he had with George were meant to be split equally but when he got a lawyer to check he found that he had only 1 per cent. And here there are allegations that his own signature was forged.

He had a choice of losing everything – the 18 months work he had put in getting the business started – or fight – hence now the court case.

Will Grahame get satisfaction?  The Thai courts are notoriously fickle. If he loses Andersson or Jannsen will no doubt go to appeal.  He could of course settle out of court as the court will request.

If I were a Thai moderator though I would get even more cantankerous knowing my attempts to protect dodgy advertisers like Drew Noyes and all these Barter people, let alone Macdonald, who has had over 30 cases brought against him by owners in Hua Hin – and been represented by Thailand’s dodgiest lawyer Brian Goudie, aka Goldie – have brought me nothing but insults.