Thailand risk report
Corruption risk is high across most sectors in Thailand. Companies regularly encounter bribery, facilitation payments, and patronage-based decision-making, particularly in procurement, customs, policing, and land administration.
Thailand has a developed anti-corruption legal framework — anchored by the 2018 anti-corruption law and the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) — but enforcement against senior and politically connected figures remains inconsistent.
Foreign companies are exposed to extraterritorial liability under the US FCPA and UK Bribery Act, and to Thailand's own corporate-liability regime, which reaches foreign companies operating in the country through local agents. There are high risks of corruption in most sectors in Thailand.
Recent Political Context
Thailand has experienced sustained political turnover. Between the 2023 and 2026 elections, three prime ministers from two parties succeeded one another, with the Constitutional Court removing two successive Pheu Thai prime ministers — Srettha Thavisin in 2024 and Paetongtarn Shinawatra in 2025 — over alleged ethics violations.
A general election was held on 8 February 2026, alongside a referendum in which voters approved replacing the military-era 2017 constitution. The Bhumjaithai Party emerged as the largest party, and its leader Anutin Charnvirakul was reelected prime minister in a parliamentary vote on 19 March 2026, leading a coalition that includes Pheu Thai. Analysts characterise the resulting stability as fragile, grounded in provincial patronage networks rather than ideological consolidation, with election-irregularity allegations and disqualification proceedings against reformist (People's Party) MPs creating ongoing uncertainty.
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Why this matters for risk The patronage-based character of the governing coalition, combined with politically selective enforcement, means corruption risk is shaped as much by political connections and shifting alliances as by formal rules. The military-junta framing used in older profiles no longer applies. |
Source: Freedom House — Freedom in the World 2026: Thailand
Source: East Asia Forum — analysis of the 2026 Thai election
Corruption Perceptions Index
Thailand's CPI score has declined over recent years, from 36 (2020 and 2022) to 33 in 2025 — below the global average of 43 — indicating entrenched, systemic public-sector corruption that has not improved. On the 2025 index, Thailand ranked 116th of 182 countries.
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Year |
Score (/100) |
Rank |
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2025 |
33 |
116 / 182 |
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2024 |
34 |
107 / 180 |
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2023 |
35 |
108 / 180 |
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2022 |
36 |
101 / 180 |
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2021 |
35 |
110 / 180 |
Note: 2024 and 2025 used different total country counts (180 vs 182); rank changes partly reflect other countries' movements. Verify the latest figure against Transparency International's current release.
Judicial
system
Corruption in the judiciary is a high risk for businesses. The courts have become deeply entangled in politics: the Constitutional Court has dissolved parties and removed prime ministers, and critics argue judicial and independent-agency decisions have been applied selectively against reformist actors. Businesses report insufficient confidence in judicial independence and view dispute resolution as slow and, at times, susceptible to extra-legal influence.
Thailand is a signatory to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards and a member of ICSID. Companies are advised to include international arbitration clauses in contracts where possible.
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VERIFIED CASE — Thaksin Shinawatra — “virtual detention” ruling (2025) Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, after returning from exile in 2023, served his reduced corruption sentence almost entirely in a police hospital rather than prison. Following a National Human Rights Commission probe, the Supreme Court ruled in 2025 that this preferential treatment was improper and ordered him to serve actual prison time. The anti-corruption NGO ACT cited the episode as an example of how favouritism in the justice and corrections systems damages Thailand's judicial credibility — illustrating that even final judgments can be undercut by selective enforcement for the powerful. |
Source: Freedom House — Freedom in the World 2026: Thailand
Source: The Nation / ACT — 10 Corruption Scandals of 2025
Source: World Bank — Worldwide Governance Indicators (Rule of Law)
Police
The Royal Thai Police is widely regarded as among the country's most corruption-prone institutions, with patronage, position-buying, and benefit-sharing from illegal businesses documented at senior levels. Surveys have indicated that roughly half of Thais report having paid a bribe to police.
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VERIFIED CASE — “Big Joke” gold-bar bribery affair (2025–26) Former deputy national police chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn (“Big Joke”) was dismissed from the force in March 2025 after a disciplinary panel found serious misconduct linked to an online-gambling investigation. He publicly described the police as a “criminal organisation” profiting from illegal gambling and grey-capital networks. At the end of 2025, the Central Investigation Bureau's Anti-Corruption Division opened a case alleging Surachate had bribed an NACC commissioner with gold bars weighing 246 baht-weight (around 10 million baht) to interfere with the gambling probe. In January 2026, Surachate, the NACC commissioner, and four associates were charged; all deny the allegations. Searches across 11 locations reportedly recovered gold and a money-laundering diagram. |
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VERIFIED CASE — Gambling-den bribery — former police chief and ~200 officers (2025) A Police Complaints Review Board recommended disciplinary action against former National Police Commissioner Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol and some 200 officers over the alleged acceptance of bribes from online gambling operations — one of the largest single police-integrity actions on record. |
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Public
services
Obtaining public services and administrative approvals carries high risk. Facilitation payments and gift-giving to “get things done” are reported, and bureaucratic inefficiency and instability are cited as significant obstacles to doing business. Low official salaries and a cultural tolerance of gift-giving contribute. Companies that refuse improper payments may face a competitive disadvantage, though firms adhering to strict FCPA-style controls report being able to compete; refusing corrupt transactions from the outset is easier than withdrawing later. Ongoing digitalisation of government services has reduced some discretionary contact points.
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VERIFIED CASE — Truck-weighing bribery network (2024–25) The NACC, with the Royal Thai Police Anti-Corruption Division, dismantled a network of state officials soliciting bribes from truck operators in exchange for ignoring overloading. Raids hit 11 locations across seven provinces, leading to arrests and charges before the Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct. The NACC recommended automated weigh-in-motion systems precisely to reduce officials' discretionary power — a concrete illustration of how routine front-line interactions generate systemic bribery. |
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VERIFIED CASE — Phuket local-government embezzlement (2024–25) The NACC pursued charges against multiple municipal and subdistrict mayors across Phuket and southern provinces for embezzling and misdirecting local-development funds, with documented losses in the millions of baht across several jurisdictions — indicating systemic capture at the local-administration level, not isolated incidents. |
Source: NACC — enforcement actions and statistics
Source: US State Department — Investment Climate Statement: Thailand
Land
administration
Land administration carries high corruption risk and has historically been cited as one of the most corruption-prone parts of the bureaucracy, with facilitation payments common for permits. Foreigners face significant restrictions on land ownership, which leads some investors toward nominee structures and long-term leases that carry legal and compliance exposure. Disputes over land titles — including in areas designated as forest reserve or national park land — recur, and companies report insufficient confidence in the protection of property rights. Independent legal advice on land structures is essential, and nominee arrangements that breach Thai law should be avoided.
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VERIFIED CASE — Khao Kradong land dispute, Buri Ram (ongoing, 2025–26) The Supreme Court, Appeal Court, and Central Administrative Court have all ruled that more than 5,000 rai of land at Khao Kradong belongs to the State Railway of Thailand, and the NACC resolved that title deeds over the land were irregularly issued and should be revoked under the Land Code. The disputed land includes assets linked to the politically powerful Chidchob family — a major power base of the governing Bhumjaithai Party — including the Chang Arena stadium and Chang International Circuit. Enforcement of the rulings has stalled, and an NACC ethics complaint has been filed naming Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and a cabinet minister. Compliance relevance: the case shows how land-title irregularities can be entangled with the highest levels of political power, and how court and NACC findings can go unenforced where powerful interests are involved — a material due-diligence flag for any land-linked transaction. |
Source: Bangkok Post — Khao Kradong land case petitions (2026)
Source: US State Department — Investment Climate Statement: Thailand
Tax
administration
Tax administration carries moderate risk. Irregular payments in the course of tax processes have been reported, though a relatively small share of firms expect to give gifts when dealing with tax officials. Tax evasion among SMEs has been a persistent concern, and the government has expanded digital filing and incentives to broaden compliance, reducing some face-to-face discretion.
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VERIFIED CASE — Duty-free and mega-project concession scrutiny (2025) Among the corruption “hot topics” flagged by the Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand for 2025 were questionable attempts to amend duty-free concessions and the high-speed-rail (three-airport) contract — arrangements where the state's revenue share and contract terms can be altered to private advantage. Revenue-share concessions of this kind have historically been a vector for losses to the state. |
Source: OECD — Tax policy and administration
Source: The Nation / ACT — 10 Corruption Scandals of 2025
Customs
administration
Customs carries very high corruption risk. Burdensome import procedures, irregular payments in both import and export, and poor time-predictability of clearance are documented obstacles. Businesses have raised concerns about the discretionary power of customs authorities and the application of valuation methodology. A long-standing “reward” system — which grants officials a share of penalties recovered — creates conflicts of interest that complicate predictability for importers, despite reforms reducing the reward percentage. Companies should maintain rigorous documentation, use reputable licensed brokers, and embed anti-bribery controls into logistics arrangements.
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VERIFIED CASE — Laem Chabang Port queue-jumping bribery (2025) In February 2025, a bribery scandal at Laem Chabang Port — Thailand's busiest deep-sea port — centred on payments by truck drivers to jump clearance queues. The Port Authority of Thailand launched an investigation, moved to modernise truck-queue management, and sought NACC assistance to strengthen anti-bribery controls. |
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VERIFIED CASE — Rhino-horn smuggling — customs bribery prosecution (NACC finding 2024) The NACC found a former deputy chief public prosecutor culpable of bribing customs officials at Suvarnabhumi Airport to allow a group of smugglers to import 21 rhino horns (about 49 kg, worth over 170 million baht) without facing criminal charges — a documented instance of border-control corruption reaching into the prosecutorial chain. |
Source: Lexology / Tilleke & Gibbins — foreign bribery in Thailand (2026)
Source: World Customs Organization
Public
procurement
Public procurement is the highest-loss corruption area in Thailand. The NACC has reported that procurement accounted for the largest share of corruption-related financial losses among complaints it received — over half of the total in a recent fiscal year. Bid-rigging, collusion, nominee companies, and kickbacks are recurrent, particularly in infrastructure and large state projects. The Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand estimates that government construction projects worth hundreds of billions of baht annually are tainted by tens of billions in corruption through specification-rigging, collusion, scope reductions, and substandard materials.
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VERIFIED CASE — State Audit Office building collapse (2025–26) — flagship procurement case On 28 March 2025, the under-construction headquarters of the State Audit Office (SAO) — ironically, the government's primary audit body — collapsed during a distant earthquake, the only building in Bangkok to do so, killing around 90 people. The 2.1-billion-baht project had been won by a joint venture of Italian-Thai Development and China Railway No. 10 (Thailand) with a bid roughly 15% below estimate. Investigations by the DSI and NACC uncovered substandard concrete and steel, multiple unauthorised design changes (including thinning the core wall), and a forged control-engineer signature. The DSI found three Thai nationals of limited means holding 51% of the contractor as apparent nominees fronting for foreign control, in breach of the Foreign Business Act; a Chinese executive was arrested and, in August 2025, the former ITD president and over 20 others were charged with negligence and manslaughter. The case crystallises Thailand's procurement risk: nominee structures defeating foreign-ownership limits, bid-rigging, substandard materials, and weak contract supervision — with the contractor linked to at least 29 government projects worth some 22.5 billion baht. |
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VERIFIED CASE — Nominee-firm procurement capture (NACC, 2025) The NACC found grounds to charge a former subdistrict administrative-organisation chief in Nakhon Ratchasima who allegedly used nominee companies he beneficially owned to capture 49 local procurement projects between 2019 and 2021, with funds traced back to him — a textbook illustration of conflict-of-interest and nominee-bidding risk at local level. |
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Compliance flag: agents and intermediaries Use of local agents to win or facilitate government contracts is a recurring source of FCPA, UK Bribery Act, and Thai corporate-liability exposure. Third-party payments should be screened, justified, and documented. Thailand's anti-corruption law expressly reaches foreign companies that use local agents to win government contracts, and the nominee-shareholding model seen in the SAO case carries Foreign Business Act liability. |
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Source: Wikipedia / contemporaneous reporting — SAO building collapse
Source: The Nation — DSI files SAO bid-rigging case to NACC (2025)
Natural
resources
Corruption risk is high in resource-linked sectors, most acutely in the fishing industry, where forced labour and trafficking have been documented and are facilitated by official complicity, particularly in border and coastal areas. State involvement in energy and infrastructure is significant, and concessions and licensing can involve opaque decision-making and politically exposed persons. The fishing sector in particular sits at the intersection of corruption risk and severe human-rights exposure (see ESG).
Source: International Labour Organization (ILO)
Source: US State Department — Trafficking in Persons Report: Thailand
Legislation
Thailand's principal anti-corruption statute is the Act Supplementing the Constitution Relating to the Prevention and Suppression of Corruption B.E. 2561 (2018), which came into force on 22 July 2018 and repealed the earlier 1999 Organic Act on Counter Corruption. It is enforced by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), with the Office of Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC), the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO), and the Office of the Attorney General also playing roles. The Penal Code criminalises active and passive bribery of officials.
The 2018 law established a corporate-liability regime: a company can be criminally liable where an associated person (employee, agent, affiliate, or joint-venture partner) pays a bribe for the company's benefit, unless the company can show it had appropriate internal control measures in place. Crucially, this liability extends to foreign juristic persons operating in Thailand — including companies without a physical presence that use local agents to win government contracts. Penalties can reach up to twice the benefit obtained. The NACC has issued guidelines setting out eight principles of adequate internal controls, and a subsequent amendment strengthened whistleblower immunity. Facilitation payments are illegal; gifts not exceeding THB 3,000 per occasion may be permissible on a cultural basis but do not constitute a legal safe harbour where corrupt intent exists.
Thailand is a party to the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) but is not a signatory to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, though the NACC cooperates with OECD members on cross-border cases.
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Extraterritorial exposure Foreign companies operating in Thailand are simultaneously exposed to the US FCPA, the UK Bribery Act 2010, and Thailand's own corporate-liability regime. Local custom provides no defence under any of these. |
Source: Norton Rose Fulbright — Thailand corporate bribery amendment
Source: UNODC — UN Convention Against Corruption
Source: NACC — Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission
Civil
society
Press freedom is constrained. Thailand ranked 92nd of 180 in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, with RSF noting that political and business elites exploit a legal system that fails to protect the press. The lèse-majesté law (Article 112 of the Penal Code), punishable by up to 15 years' imprisonment and very broadly applied, remains a permanent threat over media coverage of the monarchy, and defamation and computer-crime laws are used to harass journalists with costly litigation. The Constitutional Court's 2024 dissolution of the Move Forward Party over its proposal to amend Article 112 effectively foreclosed parliamentary reform of the law.
Freedom House continues to rate Thailand's environment as constrained, citing limited due process and impunity for crimes against civic activists, alongside continued lèse-majesté prosecutions of activists and opposition figures. Media ownership is concentrated among interests linked to political, royal, and military establishments, contributing to self-censorship. Anti-corruption reporting and whistleblowing therefore carry real personal risk, weakening an important external check on corruption.
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VERIFIED CASE — Lèse-majesté prosecutions of opposition figures (2025–26) People's Party lawmaker and pro-democracy activist Chonthicha Jangrew was sentenced by the Bangkok Criminal Court to two years and eight months for criticising the monarchy on Facebook, with a further two-year sentence upheld in a separate Article 112 case. Separately, the NACC moved against 44 former Move Forward Party MPs over their attempt to amend the lèse-majesté law, after the Constitutional Court ruled the effort unconstitutional and dissolved the party. Compliance relevance: the routine use of Article 112, defamation, and computer-crime laws against critics means independent scrutiny of corruption — by journalists, NGOs, or whistleblowers — operates under real legal jeopardy, limiting the external checks companies might otherwise rely on for reputational due diligence. |
Source: Reporters Without Borders — 2026 World Press Freedom Index
Sources
This profile was compiled from current institutional and primary sources, accessed June 2026, and follows GAN Integrity's standard country-risk structure. The complete list of sources cited throughout this profile, with links, is set out below.
Indices & governance indicators
- Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 — https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025
- Transparency International — Thailand country page — https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/thailand
- World Bank — Worldwide Governance Indicators — https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/
- Reporters Without Borders — 2026 World Press Freedom Index: Thailand — https://rsf.org/en/country/thailand
- Freedom House — Freedom in the World 2026: Thailand — https://freedomhouse.org/country/thailand/freedom-world/2026
- US State Department — Investment Climate Statement: Thailand — https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-investment-climate-statements/thailand/
- US State Department — 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report — https://www.state.gov/reports/2025-trafficking-in-persons-report/
- National Anti-Corruption Commission of Thailand (NACC) — https://www.nacc.go.th/english
- UNODC — UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) — https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/corruption/uncac.html
- International Labour Organization (ILO) — https://www.ilo.org/
- World Customs Organization — https://www.wcoomd.org/
- OECD — Tax policy and administration — https://www.oecd.org/tax/
- Norton Rose Fulbright — Thailand corporate bribery amendment — https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/90774c33/anti-corruption-in-thailand-new-amendment-strengthens-rules-on-corporate-bribery
- Bangkok Post — 'Big Joke' police bribery case (2026) — https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3187298/big-jokes-fall-from-power
- Bangkok Post — Thailand retains Tier 2 in 2025 TIP report — https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3114180/thailand-still-on-tier-2-in-key-us-trafficking-report
- The Nation — DSI files State Audit Office building bid-rigging case to NACC (2025) — https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/news/general/40051516
- Wikipedia / contemporaneous reporting — 2025 Bangkok skyscraper (SAO building) collapse — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Bangkok_skyscraper_collapse
- The Nation / ACT — 10 Corruption Scandals of 2025 — https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/news/general/40060324
- Bangkok Post — Khao Kradong land case petitions (2026) — https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/3261883/new-petitions-seek-action-on-khao-kradong-land-case
- Lexology / Tilleke & Gibbins — foreign bribery in Thailand (2026) — https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0d728d66-6bfe-463a-85a9-da077f37df4e
- East Asia Forum — analysis of the 2026 Thai election — https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/03/08/thai-elections-illusion-of-stability/
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