Fake residency of foreign children in Thailand spotlights widening corruption

On paper, the small rooms inside the flats in Din Daeng, a district in Bangkok, were packed with foreign children.

A total of 64 foreign children had been registered as occupants in one flat alone – an implausible listing that authorities say has exposed a wider fraud in Thailand’s house-registration system.

The children were not found living there. Their names, investigators say, have been fraudulently entered into official records, potentially opening the way to pink ID cards, access to public services and – in some cases – future claims to Thai citizenship.

In total, nearly 200 foreign children, reported in local media to be from Myanmar, have so far been found to have been falsely registered as residents of the flats, while dozens more rooms are under investigation.

It is a corruption scandal that extends across the country, centred on fraudulent registrations that authorities say could give foreign nationals access to Thai public services, including heavily subsidised healthcare, through what is known as the pink card.

The card itself does not confer citizenship, but authorities say it can form part of a longer paper trail that may support later claims to full nationality, making it a valuable commodity in a black-market trade allegedly involving local officials.