A court has charged two men for leading protests demanding the unfreezing of demonstrators’ accounts with a financial services firm linked to cyberscams.
Protesters said this week that their accounts with US-sanctioned Huione Group’s digital payments platform H-Pay, previously called Huione Pay, had been inaccessible since December.
The US government last year accused Huione, which owned several companies offering e-commerce, payment and cryptocurrency exchange services, of laundering funds for transnational criminal groups perpetrating scams from South-East Asia.
Huione’s former chairman, Li Xiong, was extradited to China on April 1. Chinese authorities say he was central to a major transnational gambling and fraud syndicate.
The two accused were arrested on Monday during a demonstration outside the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) in Phnom Penh that left at least two protesters bloodied after clashes with authorities.
The detained men were charged on Friday with incitement to cause serious unrest and obstruction of public traffic outside of the central bank, the Phnom Penh court said in a statement.
The court said the men and their accomplices organised a plan in April and created a Telegram group with 1,200 alleged Huione account holders in order to rally people “to hold illegal demonstrations”.
Monday’s protest followed other demonstrations in April outside the NBC and the Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh.
Protesters said that they have nothing to do with Huione’s alleged crimes and cannot access their deposits with the firm, calling on the NBC to intervene.
The NBC has said the Huione platforms’ business licences have been revoked and Huione Pay creditors should go to the courts, while H-Pay creditors can make claims with a liquidator. — AFP
