Cambodia no 'safe haven' for scams, prime minister tells anti-fraud summit

By Poppy McPherson and Chantha Lach

PHNOM ‌PENH, Sept 23 (Reuters) - ​Cambodia’s prime ​minister said the country would not be a haven for transnational scam syndicates as he opened a global conference on cyberfraud on Wednesday, where the government is keen to ‌showcase its crackdown on the multibillion-dollar scam industry.

"Cambodia will never be a safe ⁠haven for online scams," Prime Minister Hun Manet said in an opening speech in Phnom Penh, where delegates from more than ‌a dozen countries, including the United ‌States and China, have gathered.

"Cambodia will not allow criminal syndicates to undermine our country's progress and the livelihood of over 17 million Cambodian people," he said, adding that the country supported ​more international cooperation including real-time intelligence sharing.

Cambodian authorities say they have eradicated industrial-scale scam compounds, a claim met with skepticism by some analysts who say raids have left high level figures ⁠unscathed.

The conference represents a "growing openness to cooperate", said Delphine Schantz, regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“But it ​is clear that more can and needs to be done, both at national levels, and in terms of international cooperation,” she said, calling for a ​joint understanding of key trends and coherent regulatory frameworks ‌including investment in digital evidence collection.

The country, along with other Southeast Asian nations, emerged in recent years as a hub for the transnational cyberscam industry, with mostly ⁠Chinese-led criminal gangs operating compounds where trafficking victims are detained and coerced into carrying out romance scams, police-impersonation fraud and other schemes.

On Monday and Tuesday, reporters toured sprawling centres shuttered by the government – one housing as ⁠many as 20,000 workers. They also viewed materials seized by police, including fake FBI and Chinese police badges used ​in impersonation schemes.

Under pressure from countries including the US, which estimates that Americans lost more than $10 billion to scammers operating in the region in 2024 alone, Cambodia says it has raided hundreds of compounds and deported hundreds ‌of thousands of people over the past year.

But analysts and opposition figures say the raids have left politically connected figures who allegedly protected the networks ‌untouched, while criminal groups have adapted by breaking into smaller units and moving operations overseas.

The credibility of the ⁠crackdown “will depend on whether the Cambodian state ‌is willing to investigate all ​credible allegations, regardless of wealth, influence or official position," Mu Sochua, an exiled opposition politician, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Poppy McPherson and Chantha Lach; Editing by ‌Stephen Coates)

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