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Cambodian and U.S. authorities seized this week more than a ton of precursor chemicals and illegal drugs, along with roughly $7 million in cryptocurrency, in local operations connected to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, an anti-drug official said Friday.
Meas Vyrith, secretary-general of the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD), said Cambodia’s Anti-Drug Police, working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), raided four locations in Phnom Penh and other provinces over the past year in connection with the case.
The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh said Thursday the joint operation, involving DEA offices in Phnom Penh and New Jersey, uncovered a local network in Cambodia laundering cryptocurrency on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel. It said the operation also led to the arrest of multiple foreign operatives and the seizure of drug laboratories and storage facilities.
The Sinaloa Cartel is one of Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations, long known for smuggling cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine into the United States, according to the DEA. Once led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, now serving a life sentence in the U.S., the cartel was designated a foreign terrorist organization by Washington in February 2025 and has since expanded into global money-laundering operations, including through cryptocurrency, officials say.
Vyrith said the amount of drugs seized in the recent raid was greater than what the U.S. Embassy had publicly announced, but declined to provide a figure. He added that the alleged money-laundering network, which involved millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, was also linked to American suspects – a detail not mentioned in the embassy’s statement.
“The producers are Mexican and Pakistani nationals linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as others who are connected to the case, which we are still investigating,” he said. “We found that the raw materials used to produce the drugs were imported from the United States.”
The U.S. Embassy referred questions to the DEA, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“These high-level operations demonstrate how important international collaboration is in breaking up transnational criminal networks and safeguarding residents of Cambodia and the United States,” the embassy said in a post on X.
Vyrith said Cambodian authorities are committed to addressing the roots of the problem by continuing to strengthen their technical expertise and working with other relevant authorities. So far, authorities have arrested about 20 suspects linked to the Sinaloa Cartel network, he said.
The case appears to echo previous findings from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which has reported that Chinese and online scam syndicates in Cambodia and the wider region have expanded their crypto money-laundering strategies by forging alliances with South American drug cartels.
