The Hong Kong Company That Built Bangkok’s Stonehenge
In 1990, a Hong Kong company signed a contract with the Thai government to build an elevated highway and rail system across Bangkok. The project was worth 80 billion baht. It was going to connect the centre of the city to the airport. It was going to change the way Bangkok moved. The company started building.
They are still in court. Thirty-five years later. They spent 575 million dollars. They received nothing. And the concrete pillars they left behind stood rotting across Bangkok for over twenty years, nicknamed by locals as Thailand’s Stonehenge.
That is the Hopewell case. And it is not an anomaly. It is a pattern. A pattern that stretches across decades, across industries, across continents, and one that every person who has ever thought about investing, building, or doing business in Thailand needs to understand. Because the story of what happens when foreign companies enter Thailand and then things go wrong is one of the most damning stories in Southeast Asian business. And almost nobody tells it.
The Canadian Company That Went Bankrupt In Bangkok
The first one most people have never heard of. In 1990, a Canadian company called Lavalin signed a thirty-year concession to build a skytrain system in Bangkok. They had built the Skytrain in Vancouver. They had the technology. They had the contract. They started construction.
Two years later, the Thai government cancelled the contract. A new government had come to power and decided the project was no longer wanted. International media widely reported that the cancellation was driven by political interference. The Thai government said Lavalin hadn’t met its obligations. Lavalin said the government refused to provide the overseas loan guarantees it had discussed. The two sides blamed each other. But only one of them went bankrupt.
What is not in dispute is the outcome. The contract was cancelled. No compensation was paid. And the cancellation contributed directly to Lavalin Inc. filing for bankruptcy. A Canadian company that built Vancouver’s transit system was destroyed by a contract a Thai government signed and then walked away from. The skytrain Bangkok could have had in the early nineties didn’t arrive until 1999, built by a different company, on different lines, a decade late. And Lavalin got nothing.
That was 1992. You would think someone might have learned something. They didn’t.
The German Company That Tried To Seize A Royal Jet
In the late 1980s, a German construction company called Walter Bau invested in a joint venture to build and operate a tollway from Bangkok to Don Muang Airport. The deal was straightforward. Build the road. Operate it. Charge tolls. Recover the investment over the life of the concession. Then hand it over to the Thai government at the end. A standard build-operate-transfer arrangement used all over the world.
There was one catch. Toll increases had to be approved by the Thai authorities. And the Thai authorities refused. Year after year. The tolls stayed flat. The costs didn’t. The road couldn’t make money because the government wouldn’t let it charge what the concession said it should charge. And then, to make it worse, the government improved the competing free highways running alongside the tollway, something the concession contract specifically restricted. They built better free roads next to the road you’d paid to build, and then refused to let you raise your prices.
Walter Bau went to arbitration. The tribunal found that Thailand had breached its obligations. It awarded Walter Bau 29.2 million euros in damages plus costs and interest.
Thailand didn’t pay.
What happened next belongs in a film. The liquidator of Walter Bau, because by this point the company was insolvent, broken by the Thai project, tried to enforce the award internationally. A German court authorised the seizure of assets. And the asset they targeted was the Crown Prince of Thailand’s Boeing 737, which was sitting on the tarmac at Munich Airport.
They tried to impound the Thai Crown Prince’s private jet to get paid for a road the Thai government had sabotaged. That is how far a foreign company had to go to collect on a contract Thailand signed and then broke. A royal aircraft on a European runway, targeted by bailiffs, because the Thai state would not honour an international arbitration award.
The money was eventually extracted, years later, through extraordinary international legal pressure that went all the way to diplomatic channels involving the Thai Crown. But the message Thailand took from the case was not “we should honour our contracts.” The message was: stop letting companies take us to arbitration.
In 2009, after the Walter Bau award, the Thai Cabinet passed a resolution that banned the use of arbitration clauses in government contracts unless the Cabinet specifically approved them. Thailand’s response to losing an international arbitration was not to fix the behaviour that caused the loss. It was to remove the mechanism that held them accountable.
The Pattern Of Thailand Overturning Its Own Arbitration Awards
And this is where it stops being a collection of bad luck and starts looking like a system.
In 2004, the Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand was ordered to pay 6.2 billion baht in compensation after an international arbitration. The award was enforced by the Bangkok Civil Court. The Supreme Court overturned it, citing evidence of bribery in the underlying agreement. The company that won the award got nothing.
In 2006, television station ITV won an arbitration against the Office of the Prime Minister for breach of a concession agreement. The Supreme Administrative Court annulled the award, finding that the amended concession provision didn’t comply with certain government regulations. ITV got nothing.
In both cases, arbitration tribunals ruled in favour of the company. In both cases, the Thai courts found a way to overturn the result. And after the 2004 case, the Cabinet introduced its first ban on arbitration in government contracts. After Walter Bau in 2009, the ban was extended to cover virtually all government contracts with any private party, Thai or foreign.
The system does not lose gracefully. When it loses, it changes the rules so it can’t lose again.
The Australian Gold Mine Shut Down By Decree
In 2001, Australian company Kingsgate Consolidated began operating the Chatree gold mine in central Thailand through its subsidiary Akara Resources. It was the largest gold mine in the country. It employed a thousand people. It paid billions in royalties and taxes over fifteen years.
In 2016, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha used Section 44 of the interim constitution, a provision that grants unlimited, non-reviewable executive power, to shut down all gold mining in Thailand. The mine closed on January 1, 2017. No compensation was offered. None was discussed. The government simply switched it off and walked away.
Kingsgate sought 30 billion baht in compensation under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement. The government refused. Years of arbitration followed. Legal observers said Thailand had little chance of winning because Prayut had used what critics call “the dictator law” to shut the mine without any due process.
Eventually, in 2023, the government allowed the mine to reopen. Kingsgate withdrew the arbitration. No compensation was ever paid for the years of lost production, the thousand jobs destroyed, or the billions in value wiped from the company. The mine went back to work as if nothing had happened. And in March 2026, a Thai court ruled that the mine had in fact been causing pollution, meaning the company now faces liability on top of never being compensated for the shutdown.
They were shut down by decree. Given nothing. Forced to spend years and millions in legal fees. Then let back in as the “settlement.” And now they’re being told they owe money to the communities they were forced to abandon.
The Hopewell Case And Thailand’s Stonehenge
And then there is Hopewell. The biggest of them all.
The contract was signed in 1990 to build an 80 billion baht elevated highway and rail system from central Bangkok to Don Muang Airport. Construction began. Then it was suspended in 1992 by a new government. Then restarted. Then stopped again during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. By 1998, only about ten percent of the project was complete. The government formally cancelled the contract.
Hopewell said the government’s slow land acquisition and repeated political interference had caused the delays. The government said Hopewell ran out of money. Both sides blamed each other. What is not disputed is that Hopewell had spent 575 million dollars and had over a thousand concrete pillars standing in the middle of Bangkok with nothing on top of them.
In 2004, Hopewell went to arbitration. In 2008, the tribunal ruled in their favour. The government owed 11.88 billion baht for wrongful termination. The government appealed. The Central Administrative Court annulled the award in 2014, saying Hopewell had filed too late. Hopewell appealed. In 2019, the Supreme Administrative Court reversed the lower court and upheld the original award. 11.88 billion baht plus 7.5 percent annual interest. By then, the total had grown to roughly 25 billion baht. The court ordered payment within 180 days.
The government did not pay.
Instead, it fought for a retrial. It claimed to have found new evidence that Hopewell hadn’t been properly registered as a company when it won the contract. In 2022, the Supreme Administrative Court granted the retrial. And in September 2023, the Central Administrative Court overruled the arbitration tribunal’s original order entirely.
After 35 years. After spending 575 million dollars. After winning at arbitration. After winning at the Supreme Administrative Court. After being told the money was owed within 180 days. Hopewell has received nothing. Zero. The company spent half a billion dollars building something the Thai government asked it to build, and three and a half decades later it has not seen a single baht in return.
And the concrete pillars stood in Bangkok for over twenty years, rotting in the rain, a monument to what happens when you trust the Thai state with a contract.
The Agency That Was Supposed To Pay Is Already Bankrupt
And here is the detail that makes everything you have just read worse.
The entity that a court ordered to pay Hopewell 25 billion baht, the State Railway of Thailand, is one of the most financially broken organisations in the country. It has accumulated debts of over 230 billion baht. It loses a minimum of 10 billion baht every single year. In 2025, the Cabinet had to approve an emergency loan of 18 billion baht just to keep it functioning. It sits on land worth over 400 billion baht that it cannot monetise. It needed a government bailout to pay its own staff.
This is who owed Hopewell the money. An agency that cannot keep its own lights on without a loan from the state was supposed to pay a foreign company 400 million dollars. Even if every court in Thailand had upheld the award, even if there had been no retrials, no procedural challenges, no thirty-five years of delay, there was never any money to collect. The debt sat inside an entity that was already drowning in its own.
That is the final layer. It is not just that the system won’t pay. It is that the system is structured so that even when it loses, even when the courts say pay, the money does not exist. The obligation sits inside an agency that is itself a liability. The award is real. The debt is real. The ability to collect is fiction.
The SRT is also the agency at the centre of the still-unfinished three-airports high-speed rail project with the CP Group, signed in 2019, still not finalised as of 2026, contract amendments still bouncing between agencies. Seven years after signing, not a single train runs. Another foreign company. Another Thai government contract. Another decade of waiting.
The Real Rule Of Doing Business In Thailand
Every one of these companies entered Thailand believing the same thing. That a signed contract meant something. That an international arbitration award was enforceable. That a court order would be honoured. That if the government broke its word, there was a system that would make it right.
There isn’t.
Foreign judgments are not enforceable in Thailand. You have to start a new case from scratch. International arbitration awards have been annulled, overturned, or simply ignored. When the government lost arbitrations, it banned arbitration. When courts ordered payment, the government sought retrials. When retrials failed, it found new evidence. When that failed, it found procedural grounds. And when all else fails, the entity that owes the money turns out to be too broke to pay anyway.
This is the same country that expects you, the foreigner, the investor, the business owner, to follow every rule. Register your company correctly. Pay your taxes. File your reports. Renew your work permit. Prove your finances. Report to immigration. And if you get any of it wrong, there are consequences. Fines. Prosecution. Deportation. Business dissolution.
But when the Thai state gets it wrong, when it breaks a contract, cancels a concession, shuts down a mine by decree, sabotages a tollway, or simply walks away from a project it asked someone to build, there are no consequences. There is no mechanism. There is no enforcement. There is just decades of litigation, billions in unpaid awards, and a system that has been specifically redesigned to make sure it never has to answer for what it does.
A Canadian company went bankrupt. A German company went insolvent and had to try to seize a royal jet to get paid. An Australian company lost years of production and was never compensated. A Hong Kong company spent 575 million dollars and received nothing in 35 years. And Thailand’s response to all of it was not reform. It was to remove the one tool that held it accountable and carry on exactly as before.
That is what doing business in Thailand looks like when it goes wrong. And the worst part is not that it went wrong. The worst part is that there is nothing, no court, no treaty, no award, no mechanism on earth, that can make it right. They made sure of that.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Hopewell case in Thailand?
The Hopewell case is the longest-running foreign investor dispute in Thai history. In 1990, the Hong Kong-based Hopewell Holdings signed an 80 billion baht contract with the Thai government to build an elevated highway and rail system from central Bangkok to Don Muang Airport. The government cancelled the contract in 1998 after 35 years of suspensions, restarts, and political interference. Hopewell spent 575 million dollars. In 2008, an arbitration tribunal ordered Thailand to pay 11.88 billion baht. In 2019 the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the award, by then grown to 25 billion baht. In 2023 the Central Administrative Court overruled the original arbitration order entirely. Hopewell has received nothing.
What happened to Walter Bau and the Thai Crown Prince’s jet?
German construction firm Walter Bau invested in the Bangkok-Don Muang tollway in the late 1980s. The Thai authorities refused approved toll increases and built competing free roads in breach of the concession contract. Walter Bau went insolvent. An international arbitration tribunal awarded the company 29.2 million euros. Thailand refused to pay. The liquidator, through a German court, authorised the seizure of the Thai Crown Prince’s Boeing 737 sitting at Munich Airport in 2011 to enforce the award. The money was eventually extracted through extraordinary diplomatic pressure. In response, the Thai Cabinet in 2009 had already passed a resolution banning arbitration clauses in government contracts unless specifically approved.
What happened to the Kingsgate Chatree gold mine?
In 2016, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha used Section 44 of the interim constitution to shut down all gold mining in Thailand. The Chatree mine, operated by Australian company Kingsgate Consolidated through its subsidiary Akara Resources, closed on January 1, 2017. No compensation was offered. Kingsgate sought 30 billion baht under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Years of arbitration followed. In 2023, the mine was allowed to reopen and Kingsgate withdrew the arbitration. No compensation was ever paid. In March 2026, a Thai court ruled the mine had been causing pollution, exposing the company to fresh liability on top of never being compensated for the original shutdown.
Why did Lavalin Inc. go bankrupt?
The Canadian engineering company Lavalin Inc. signed a 30-year concession in 1990 to build a Bangkok skytrain system, having previously built Vancouver’s. Two years later, after a change of Thai government, the contract was cancelled. The Thai government said Lavalin had not met its obligations. Lavalin said the government refused to provide the overseas loan guarantees that had been discussed. No compensation was paid. The cancellation contributed directly to Lavalin Inc. filing for bankruptcy. The Bangkok skytrain Lavalin would have built did not arrive until 1999, built by a different company on different lines.
Are foreign judgments enforceable in Thailand?
No. Foreign judgments are not enforceable in Thailand. A foreign company that wins a case in another country cannot bring that judgment to Thailand and have it executed. They must start a new case from scratch in the Thai courts. International arbitration awards have been annulled, overturned, or simply ignored, sometimes after surviving multiple levels of Thai court review. In 2009 the Thai Cabinet banned arbitration clauses in government contracts entirely unless Cabinet-approved, removing the main mechanism through which foreign companies had previously been able to obtain redress.
Why can’t the State Railway of Thailand pay the Hopewell award?
Because the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) is itself effectively insolvent. It has accumulated debts of over 230 billion baht. It loses a minimum of 10 billion baht every single year. In 2025, the Cabinet had to approve an emergency loan of 18 billion baht just to keep it functioning. It sits on land worth over 400 billion baht that it cannot monetise. It has needed government bailouts to pay its own staff. The agency that was ordered to pay Hopewell 25 billion baht has no money to pay with. The obligation exists. The capacity to pay does not.
What is the lesson for any foreign company considering business in Thailand?
That a signed Thai contract does not mean what foreigners assume it means. The Thai state has cancelled concessions by decree, refused to honour international arbitration awards, banned arbitration in response to losing arbitrations, and located its legal obligations inside agencies that have no ability to pay. A Canadian company went bankrupt. A German company went insolvent and had to target a royal jet to collect. An Australian company lost years of production and was never compensated. A Hong Kong company spent 575 million dollars and got nothing in 35 years. Every one of them believed a signed contract meant something. None of them found a mechanism that could make it right when the Thai state walked away.
Sources
- Hopewell project history, 35 years of litigation, “Thailand’s Stonehenge”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Elevated_Road_and_Train_System - Hopewell spent US$575 million, received zero
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1665208/ - Supreme Administrative Court ordered 11.88B baht + 7.5% interest (2019)
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1665208/ - September 2023: Central Administrative Court overruled arbitration
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2649097/ - Government sought retrial claiming registration irregularities
https://thailand-construction.com/thailands-hopewell-case-the-ongoing-story-so-far/ - Lavalin Skytrain — cancelled 1992, political interference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavalin_Skytrain - Lavalin cancellation contributed to company bankruptcy
https://grokipedia.com/page/lavalin_skytrain - Walter Bau — tollway concession, toll increases refused
https://www.iisd.org/itn/2010/05/11/german-investor-awarded-29-million-euros/ - Walter Bau award: €29.2 million + costs
https://www.iisd.org/itn/2010/05/11/german-investor-awarded-29-million-euros/ - Crown Prince’s Boeing 737 targeted for seizure
https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/(ASCE)LA.1943-4170.0000093 - Thailand defaulted on Walter Bau payment
https://www.academia.edu/26259666/Walter_Bau_AG - Cabinet banned arbitration in government contracts (2004, extended 2009)
https://arbitrationblog.kluwerarbitration.com/2015/12/15/the-kingdom-of-thailand-and-international-arbitration/ - Rapid Transit Authority — $202M award overturned
https://arbitrationblog.kluwerarbitration.com/2014/10/09/thai-administrative-court-overturns/ - ITV arbitration award annulled
https://arbitrationblog.kluwerarbitration.com/2014/10/09/thai-administrative-court-overturns/ - Kingsgate — mine shut by Section 44, no compensation
https://www.mining.com/thailand-faces-arbitration-decision-shut-active-gold-mine/ - Kingsgate sought 30B baht, government refused
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1653764/ - Mine reopened 2023, arbitration withdrawn, no compensation paid
https://thediplomat.com/2024/01/cannabis-crunch-thailands-sudden-reversal/ - SRT accumulated debt 230 billion baht
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2661361 - SRT 18 billion baht emergency loan 2025
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3131152/ - SRT annual losses minimum 10 billion baht
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Railway_of_Thailand - Foreign judgments not enforceable in Thailand
https://www.ganintegrity.com/country-profiles/thailand/ - Courts “occasionally refused to enforce international arbitration awards”
https://www.ganintegrity.com/country-profiles/thailand/ - Three-airports high-speed rail — signed 2019, still not finalised
https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/news/general/40062817 - March 2026: Chatree mine ruled to have caused pollution
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3223414/
