KAMPOT, Cambodia (Reuters): Cambodia has closed almost 200 scam centres in a crackdown on transnational fraud in recent weeks, a senior government official said, with authorities providing rare access to one centre in a bid to show they are tackling the sophisticated operations targeting people across the globe.
"There are about 190 locations that we have sealed off now,” Chhay Sinarith, senior minister and chair of Cambodia's Commission for Combating Online Scams, told Reuters in Phnom Penh this week before the visit to a sprawling complex in Kampot province near the Vietnam border.
Chhay said 173 senior crime figures linked to the centres had been arrested and 11,000 workers deported in a campaign that began late last year after the U.S. indicted and then China extradited a China-born alleged scam kingpin in the strongest international move so far against the criminal networks.
Since then, thousands of scam workers, some of them trafficking victims confined in brutal conditions, have fled compounds in recent weeks seeking to return home, in what Amnesty International has called a "humanitarian crisis.”
At the Kampot compound, reporters were shown large work rooms with rows of computer stations and desks strewn with documents instructing how to scam Thai victims, as well as studio booths for phone calls and a fake Indian police station.
The Indian embassy in Phnom Penh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Authorities said there were no arrests made inside the Kampot casino complex known as My Casino. Workers fled after the detention of alleged boss and tycoon Ly Kuong, and police said they lacked the manpower to detain those leaving.
Contact details for representatives of Ly Kuong, who is under arrest, were not immediately available.
"We have only about 1,000 policemen in the entire province and there are about 300 military policemen,” said Kampot provincial police chief Mao Chanmothurith during the government-organised tour.
"Even with both forces combined, we still can’t stop them because there were about 6,000 to 7,000 of them when they left this place,” he said.
The visit came a week after Thai officials led media and foreign delegates to see a separate compound, in Cambodian territory that Thai troops bombed and occupied during a border conflict in December.
Reuters found similar materials, including fake police stations from multiple countries, as well as reams of documents.
Cambodia long played down the existence of scam compounds in the country, and previous crackdowns have done little to stop their spread.
Officials say the latest campaign is broader in scope, with a focus on closing sites and detaining senior figures. (Reporting by Reuters staff. Editing by Lincoln Feast.) -- Reuters
