25th October 2025 – (Phnom Penh) He did not so much arrive in Cambodia as materialise at its most advantageous moment. In the early 2010s, as Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville were remade by Chinese capital, a young Fujianese entrepreneur named Chen Zhi slipped into the slipstream. Within a few years he had a Cambodian passport, a ministerial‑rank advisory title, and the vaunted honorific of neak oknha. He was welcomed into rooms where real power circulates: advising Interior Minister Sar Kheng from 2017, in business with Sar Sokha, cultivating proximity to Hun Sen and, later, Hun Manet. He amassed licences that confer leverage — banking, airlines, property — and the social polish of philanthropy and scholarships. The baby face and tidy goatee helped. The money helped much more.
When the United States unsealed charges this month accusing him of orchestrating a cyber‑fraud empire built on forced labour, and when Washington and London announced asset freezes and the largest crypto seizure in history — roughly US$14-15 billion in bitcoin — few seasoned observers were surprised. The allegations do not describe an aberration. They outline the business model of an entire ecosystem that Cambodia tolerated, even celebrated, so long as capital flowed, construction cranes swung and the politically connected prospered.
Chen’s ascent makes sense only against that backdrop. He entered Cambodia’s property market around 2010-11, as land expropriations and speculative towers multiplied. By 2014, naturalised and legally able to buy land, he founded Prince Group in 2015 and soon added a commercial bank, an airline certificate and marquee developments: malls in Phnom Penh, hotels on the coast, an “eco‑city” in Sihanoukville. He obtained a Cypriot passport in 2018 and Vanuatu citizenship thereafter — mobility as an asset class. Even after Sihanoukville’s online‑gambling bubble burst in 2019, after Beijing leaned on Phnom Penh to shut internet casinos and hundreds of thousands of Chinese departed, Chen kept spending: London mansions and office blocks, Hong Kong trophy homes, private jets, a Picasso.
Prosecutors say the source was industrialised crime. The case materials sketch a familiar but chilling architecture: compounds ringed by walls and razor wire; dormitories and “phone farms” that manage tens of thousands of social accounts; scripts for “pig butchering” investment frauds and romance cons; flows obscured through shell companies and crypto wallets. The U.S. describes at least ten compounds in Cambodia and a transnational web of more than a hundred affiliated entities. The U.K. lists properties and companies now frozen. China, too, has probed parts of the network. Journalists and researchers have documented beatings, extortion, torture and the sale of captive workers from one compound to another.
Why Cambodia? Because money explained away everything. The government’s embrace of casino‑led development, special economic zones and permissive licensing supplied infrastructure and cover. Patronage networks merged with business interests; elite families and security services were reported to own or benefit from land and facilities used by scam operators. Civil society and independent media that might have applied pressure were neutered. When allegations grew too loud, occasional raids showcased resolve; yet the compounds endured, staff were reshuffled, and the money kept moving. The state’s repeated insistence that it does not protect criminals rings hollow against years of inaction and the sheer scale of the trade.
UN agencies and independent analysts now estimate the global scam economy generates tens of billions of dollars a year; some studies place Cambodia’s take in the low‑to‑mid tens of billions, a staggering share of national output. That number is contested but directionally revealing. If you believe these flows are incidental, you have not looked at the concrete. Towers rise because financing is available; financing is available because returns are high and scrutiny is low. Where law enforcement is pliable, where gatekeepers — lawyers, accountants, agents, bankers — look the other way, illicit capital launders reputations as quickly as it launders cash.
Victims are everywhere precisely because the labour model scales. Traffickers recruit polyglot workforces — Chinese, Vietnamese, Thais, Malaysians, Filipinos, South Asians, Africans, Eastern Europeans — under the promise of legitimate jobs. Passports are confiscated; debts are imposed; violence enforces productivity. Native‑language operators then target their own countries. The industry’s brutal efficiency means the next wave of victims is not confined by borders: Americans conned out of savings; Britons duped by romance scams; South Koreans lured to compounds, with some never returning; Southeast Asians trapped near home.
It is convenient to pretend this is an aberration of a single mogul. It is more accurate — and more uncomfortable — to see a political economy optimised for precisely this outcome. When an insider gains official advisory roles, when donations purchase honorifics, when state media lauds philanthropy while independent reporters face arrest, the incentives are clear. The government’s recent statements — calling for evidence, promising commissions, insisting that no one is above the law — might matter if they were paired with structural reform: independent prosecutions, real asset‑recovery cooperation, transparency in beneficial ownership, and a purge of officials implicated in enabling the trade. Those steps would threaten the very networks that have defined power for decades. That is why they remain unlikely.
The international response has finally targeted the architecture rather than the symptoms. The joint U.S.‑U.K. campaign seized crypto at scale, designated individuals and entities across jurisdictions, and shook confidence among counterparties in Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and Hong Kong. Banks froze deposits; regulators opened files; partners backed away. For once, the message reached the boardrooms and service providers that make impunity possible: your fees are not worth the risk. Whether that moment endures depends on follow‑through. Sanctions are a tool, not a strategy. Without coordinated investigations, asset tracing, extradition efforts and, critically, support for victims and witnesses, the networks will morph, shift jurisdiction, rebrand and continue.
Chen’s vanishing act since the announcements is emblematic. The cultivated image — a courteous young magnate, too discreet for tabloid excess, devoted to nation‑building — was designed to be a shield. It worked for a time because many people wanted it to. Developers sold units; bankers collected spreads; officials collected tribute; Western enablers clipped fees and wrote glowing boilerplate. The lesson is not only that a tycoon can be accused of masterminding a brutal enterprise. It is that entire systems — local and international — prefer the story of progress to the work of due diligence.
The Cambodian government will insist its hands are clean, that it rescues trafficked workers and prosecutes criminals. Yet the brazen longevity of the compounds, the reported involvement of politically connected figures, and the sheer quantities of money involved argue otherwise. If authorities were serious, we would already see independent inquiries with teeth, officials suspended pending investigation, transparent court proceedings, cooperation with foreign warrants, and a public accounting of beneficial owners of high‑risk zones and casinos. Instead, we see reassurances to depositors and appeals for patience.
Illegal business flourishes where it is profitable, protected and normalised. Cambodia supplied all three. Chen Zhi rose because the door was open, the cheques cleared and applause was for sale. The victims number in the tens or hundreds of thousands because the model is ruthlessly efficient and the safeguards were performative. The world is finally reacting, but the question that matters is domestic: will Phnom Penh choose to dismantle the ecosystem that enriched its insiders? If the answer remains no, the next Chen — smoother, more careful, less visible — will be along shortly.
