PHNOM PENH (Bernama): The United States (US) Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Director, Kash Patel, pledged stronger cooperation with Cambodia to dismantle cyber scam syndicates as online fraud inflicts billions of dollars in losses across Southeast Asia.
The cooperation emerged during his talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, reported online portal Fresh News.
Cambodia and the US are seeking to adopt a new approach in combating transnational crime, drug trafficking and online scams that have been threatening Southeast Asia.
Patel’s visit comes days after the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned that combined annual losses from scam offences across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand were estimated at between US$88 billion (RM360 billion) and US$114 billion (RM466 billion) for 2025.
The combined annual retail value of the methamphetamine, ketamine, and heroin markets was estimated at between US$75 billion (RM307 billion) and US$110 billion (RM450 billion).
The organisation, in its report released earlier this week, said criminal syndicates had transformed into corporate-style networks, posing a challenge to governance, economic stability and development.
"What we are seeing is a shift in which groups that stayed within their own geographic domain and criminal speciality are now operating across multiple illicit markets at once, relying on the same service streams,” said UNODC Regional Representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific Delphine Schantz, according to a press statement issued on July 21.
"Their operating model looks like corporate franchising - imagine specialised departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based, interconnected network.”
The report, titled "An Interconnected Ecosystem: Transnational Organised Crime Threat Assessment for South-East Asia July 2026,” was released on July 21.
Patel arrived in Cambodia after attending a two-day "Summit for the Scam Centres” in Bangkok co-hosted by Thailand and the US earlier this week.
-- BERNAMA
