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Prime Minister Hun Manet said he did not know his former adviser Chen Zhi was allegedly running online scam networks across Cambodia, and denied that such operations profited the government, in a rare interview with international media on Wednesday.
“We did not know that he was a kingpin,” Hun Manet told AFP during a visit to Brussels, part of an international trip to shore up diplomatic support over a border conflict with Thailand.
Chen, chairman of conglomerate Prince Group, was arrested alongside two other Chinese nationals on Jan. 6 and later extradited to China. The United States has described Prince Group as one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal organizations.
The U.S. and Britain sanctioned the group in October, accusing it of running scam operations built on forced labor that targeted Americans and other victims overseas. Prince Group has denied the allegations.
Chen was also indicted by U.S. authorities, who seized about $14 billion in bitcoin they said was linked to illicit proceeds. China’s cybersecurity agency later accused Washington of orchestrating the “theft” of the funds years before Chen was indicted.
Hun Manet told the news agency that the Prince Group founder was extradited to China rather than the U.S. because he was a Chinese citizen. Cambodia stripped Chen of his Cambodian nationality after the government said he had fraudulently obtained it.
The Cambodian leader, who succeeded his father Hun Sen as prime minister in 2023, said scam centers were part of the country’s “black economy,” destroying its “honest economy,” damaging Cambodia’s reputation and hurting tourism and investment.
A 2023 report by the U.N. human rights office estimated at least 100,000 people from dozens of countries were forced to work in online scam operations in Cambodia that year, many allegedly run by Chinese syndicates. Similar networks have proliferated across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar and Laos, swindling an estimated $18 billion to $37 billion from victims worldwide each year, according to the report.
During trips to Washington and Europe this month, Hun Manet has promoted what he said was his government’s commitment to eradicating online scam networks.
Phnom Penh has launched a nationwide enforcement sweep to root out the operations, which it says it will “eliminate” by April. The government claimed scam activity has already halved since the crackdown intensified in January.
Observers have questioned the durability of the campaign and called for investigations into elites allegedly linked to scam operations. Rights groups have described the flight of thousands of people from scam compounds as a humanitarian crisis.
While scams have been a major focus, the 48-year-old leader has also turned to a border dispute with Thailand following clashes last year that ended in a ceasefire, calling for a peaceful resolution while accusing Thailand of occupying parts of Cambodian territory.
