Cambodia urged to prosecute those who enabled scam compounds
Mu Sochua
When FBI Director Kash Patel arrived in Phnom Penh last week, Cambodia’s political regime achieved something it has long sought: international validation.
Standing alongside Prime Minister Hun Manet, Patel pledged deeper cooperation against the cyber scam industry that has trafficked thousands into forced online labor and defrauded victims around the world of billions of dollars. After years of mounting evidence linking Cambodia's scam economy to the business interests of political elites, the visit offered the country’s young premier an opportunity to recast his administration as a committed partner in dismantling the very criminal enterprise that flourished under its watch.
Yet the most important message came not from photographs or prepared remarks, but from an accompanying statement issued by the U.S. Embassy. While welcoming recent enforcement operations by Cambodian authorities, the embassy explicitly called for accountability not only for lower-level operators but also for "high-level scam bosses" and "complicit officials." That single sentence quietly dismantled Phnom Penh's preferred narrative and made clear that Washington is no longer prepared to accept raids without accountability.
In an interview the following day, Hun Manet sought to contain the political fallout, insisting that Cambodia is committed to eliminating scam operations and restoring its international reputation.
However, his dismissal of sanctions against prominent Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) officials as “private legal matters” did little to isolate the individuals’ actions from the regime as intended. It has been well documented by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations that these criminal enterprises — which have imprisoned tens of thousands of trafficked workers from around the world, including Korea, moved billions of dollars across borders and continue to occupy vast commercial developments — have consistently relocated to areas where regulatory indifference is rife and corruption is widespread. The relocation of an entire industry into Cambodia requires more than isolated local corruption; it depends on a system of patronage and political protection at all levels.
Nowhere was this more visible than in Sihanoukville. In little more than a decade, Chinese-backed casino and property investment transformed the southern coastal city into a landscape of glittering casinos, unfinished towers and opaque ownership structures, where criminal syndicates operated alongside state-allied commerce with remarkable impunity. As international scrutiny intensified, the industry adapted, dispersing into hotels, commercial buildings and border towns such as Poipet and Bavet. For all of the raids conducted by Cambodian authorities, the fundamental business model of the scam industry and its relationship to the state remained unaltered.
The same pattern is evident in Cambodia's Special Economic Zones. Established to attract foreign investment through tax incentives and light regulation, several have evolved into ideal operating environments for organized crime. Weak oversight, extensive commercial autonomy, and private security have allowed legitimate investment and transnational criminal enterprises to coexist behind the same walls. Their role in the proliferation of Cambodia's scam economy cannot be explained by any absence of state authority, but rather by the state's failure to intervene.
For Hun Manet, ignorance has long ceased to be a credible defense. By the time he became prime minister, in 2023, investigative journalists such as Mech Dara, civil society organizations and foreign governments had documented the industry's expansion for several years. They traced scam compounds to politically connected business interests, documented widespread forced labor and demonstrated how industrial-scale online fraud had become embedded in Cambodia's economy. But in a system where patronage is paramount, political will to acknowledge this was minimal.
That is why U.S. sanctions against CPP senators Ly Yong Phat and Kok An matter. They shattered Phnom Penh's statements that the scam industry is the work of rogue criminal groups operating beyond the state's reach. Instead, aided by the investigative work of organizations and journalists on the ground, Washington identified members of Cambodia's governing elite as part of the problem itself.
This has shifted the demand for action away from the closure of the compounds themselves, and onto Hun Manet and his willingness to hold his political allies to account. For all the rhetoric about eradicating the "root causes" of cyber scams, there is little evidence, to date, that the ruling administration is prepared to investigate the interests that made the industry possible.
The international community bears some of the blame for this intransigence. For years, foreign governments have accepted stage-managed enforcement operations as genuine efforts by the Cambodian authorities to clamp down on these criminal networks. A new United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report estimates that cyber-enabled scams generated hundreds of billions in losses for people globally in 2025, warning that criminal networks are adapting rapidly to enforcement by dispersing into new jurisdictions or fragmenting into smaller operations.
Scam centers have shifted seamlessly between Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar as pressure has ebbed and flowed, demonstrating that arrests alone cannot dismantle an industry built upon elite patronage and transnational financial infrastructure. Every raid that leaves the facilitators untouched reinforces Phnom Penh's preferred argument that the state is solving a problem for which it bears no responsibility.
As these operations continue to fragment and shift across borders, gathering evidence and holding those responsible to account will become increasingly difficult. That makes sustained international pressure on Cambodia's political leadership more, not less, important. Partners should expand sanctions against senior Cambodian officials and CPP-linked business figures, strengthen anti-money-laundering measures, restrict access to international financial networks, press for enhanced Financial Action Task Force scrutiny and push Hun Manet to follow through on his promises for judicial reform.
Future law enforcement cooperation and diplomatic engagement should also be tied to wider measurable benchmarks — not just in investigating senior facilitators, but in upholding broader commitments to democracy and human rights. That principle should extend to Cambodia's participation in high-level international forums, including the forthcoming Francophonie Summit, where engagement ought to be contingent on the release of political prisoners and credible steps to protect independent media and political opposition.
The political regime in Phnom Penh is asking the world to judge it by the compounds it closes rather than the elites it protects. That is the wrong standard. Shutting scam compounds is necessary, but it is not the measure of success. Until Hun Manet demonstrates a willingness to investigate and prosecute the political interests that have enabled this criminal economy to thrive, claims of meaningful reform will remain unconvincing — and international validation undeserved.
Mu Sochua, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and former Cambodian politician now living in exile, is president of the Khmer Movement for Democracy.