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A senior Foreign Affairs Ministry official is being questioned over allegations he stole thousands of visa stickers and illegally issued them to foreign scam operators, the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) said Friday.
ACU spokesperson Soy Chanvichet confirmed the questioning of Tho Samnang, former director general of the ministry’s General Directorate of Legal, Consular and Border Affairs, who stepped down in April to become an advisor.
Chanvichet said Samnang confessed to stealing more than 6,000 type-C visa stickers – typically issued to foreign visitors on arrival – and visa extensions, then issuing them to alleged scam operators. Investigators are still searching for another 4,000 stickers that Samnang said he had destroyed, Chanvichet added.
Chanvichet, declined to comment further when asked whether any other officials have been questioned.
Foreign Affairs Ministry Secretary of State Eat Sophea declined to elaborate on the case but said an investigation was underway and that she did not yet know how many officials were involved.
“In principle, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has ordered officials to maintain cleanliness and work responsibly to protect national interests and prestige, but this is an individual’s misconduct,” she said.
The case comes as Cambodia continues a crackdown on its online scam industry, which has made the country a hub for transnational crime syndicates that authorities and researchers say bilk tens of billions of dollars a year from victims worldwide. The United Nations estimated in 2023 that more than 100,000 people from dozens of countries have been subjected to forced or coerced labor in scam operations in Cambodia alone.
Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center and a researcher on transnational crime in Southeast Asia, said further accountability is still needed for officials and ruling elites connected to the industry.
“It is well established that Cambodian immigration has served as a frictionless conduit for transnational criminal migration for many years,” he said. The General Department of Immigration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government says it has shut down hundreds of scam compounds and deported tens of thousands of scam workers, but it has faced criticism for failing to protect trafficking victims and for not acting against senior officials sanctioned by the United States over alleged links to the industry.
