Cambodia as a โscam stateโ
Cambodia has been described by analysts as a de facto scam state that risks becoming a global pariah if it fails to act against the criminal networks within its borders.
The global scam industry, estimated to be worth between $50 billion and $70 billion, is evolving at an unprecedented scale, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime said earlier this year, despite widely publicized crackdowns on scam compounds in Myanmar.
Cambodia, which has emerged as an epicenter of this scam economy, is estimated to make $12.5 billion to $19 billion a year from cybercrime โ equivalent to about 60% of the countryโs GDP, according to a report published by the Humanity Research Consultancy in May.
In June, an Amnesty International report accused the Cambodian government of โdeliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labour and tortureโ carried out by criminal gangs in scamming compounds across the country.
And the US State Department named Cambodia a state sponsor of human trafficking in its 2025 Trafficking in Persons report, which noted that senior Cambodian officials owned properties used by online scam operators to exploit victims.
Analysts estimate there are about 300 scamming compounds in the country with a workforce of up to 200,000 people. Cambodiaโs garment and textile industry, long a mainstay of its economy, employs about 1 million people, according to the UN.
The Humanity Research Consultancy report, authored by Sims, goes further, detailing how the Cambodian leadership and Cambodian state institutions are โdeeply and directly implicated in the growth, durability, and flourishingโ of the countryโs scam industry.
โThe charges focus on Chen and Prince, not the state per se, but the pattern is unmistakable: you donโt build ten forced-labor scam compounds, move billions, and buy impunity without political protection,โ Sims said. โIt is impossible to imagine that such vast wealth would be moving through the system without the explicit knowledge and participation of its strongman and his immediate circle.โ
The criminal operations have gone largely unchallenged in Cambodia due to the complete dismantling in recent years of the countryโs civil society and independent media.
In October 2024, the arrest of prominent Cambodian journalist Mech Dara, who helped expose the human trafficking fueling online scam centers, prompted widespread international concern.
โCivil society in Cambodia has been decimated,โ said GI-TOCโs Tower. โAnd anyone who goes and reports on this issue now theyโre silenced. So thereโs no space to report on the scam economy, or to raise these issues in the media, civil society canโt touch it.โ
The Cambodian government has repeatedly denied any link to the cybercrime industry, and said this month that it is โcommitted to preventing and suppressing all forms of cross-border crimes, particularly online scams.โ
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Hun Manet established a commission to target the scammers. The government says it has led to the arrest of 3,455 suspects, of 20 nationalities, accused of cybercrime. Authorities also say they have broken up several organized crime and trafficking networks, rescuing human trafficking victims in the process.
โWe do not protect individuals who violate the law,โ Cambodiaโs Interior Ministry spokesman Touch Sokhak told the Associated Press news agency regarding Chen. He stressed that Cambodiaโs government itself does not accuse Prince Group or Chen of wrongdoing.
The ministry has also rejected reports that Interior Minister Sar Sokha is a co-investor in the Jin Bei Casino Company โ which the US Treasury said runs โamong the most notoriousโ of Prince Groupโs scam compounds. Meanwhile, the National Bank of Cambodia said it was โtaking careful monitoring and investigation measuresโ to ensure Prince Groupโs financial services arm Prince Bank โcomplies with Cambodian laws.โ
- human trafficking: ์ธ์ ๋งค๋งค
mainstay: (์กฐ์งยท๊ฒฝ์ ๋ฑ์) ์ฃผ์ ๊ธฐ๋ฐ, ์ค์ฌ์ถ
- impunity: ์ฒ๋ฒ๋ฐ์ง ์์, ๋ฉด์ฑ
โ์ฌ๊ธฐ ๊ตญ๊ฐโ๋ก์์ ์บ๋ณด๋์
์ผ๊ฐ์์๋ ์บ๋ณด๋์๊ฐ ์ค์ ๋ก ์ฌ๊ธฐ๊ตญ๊ฐ(de facto scam state)๋ผ ๋ถ๋ฆฌ๋ฉฐ, ๋ด๋ถ์ ์กด์ฌํ๋ ๋ฒ์ฃ ๋คํธ์ํฌ์ ๋ํด ์ ์ ํ ๋์ํ์ง ๋ชปํ๋ฉด ๊ตญ์ ์ ๋์ธ์ด ์ฐํ ์ํ์ด ์๋ค๊ณ ๋ถ์๋๋ค.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime๋ ์ฌํด ์ด ๊ธ๋ก๋ฒ ์ฌ๊ธฐ ์ฐ์
์ด 500์ต~700์ต ๋ฌ๋ฌ ๊ท๋ชจ๋ก ์ ๋ก ์๋ ์๋๋ก ์งํํ๊ณ ์๋ค๊ณ ๋ฐํ ๋ฐ ์๋ค.
์บ๋ณด๋์๋ ์ด๋ฌํ ์ฌ๊ธฐ๊ฒฝ์ ์ ์ง์์ง๋ก ๋ ์ฌ๋์ผ๋ฉฐ, ์ฐ๊ฐ ์ฝ 125์ต~190์ต ๋ฌ๋ฌ์ ์ฌ์ด๋ฒ๋ฒ์ฃ ์์ต์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌ๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ์ถ์ฐ๋๋ค. ์ด๋ ์๊ตญ GDP์ ์ฝ 60%์ ํด๋นํ๋ค๋ ๋ณด๊ณ ๋ ์๋ค.
์ฌํด 6์, Amnesty International์ ์บ๋ณด๋์ ์ ๋ถ๊ฐ ๋ฒ์ฃ์กฐ์ง์ด ์ ๊ตญ์ ๋ง๋ ์ฌ๊ธฐ๋ณตํฉ๋จ์ง(scam compounds) ๋ด์์ ๋ฐ์ํ ๋
ธ์์ , ์ธ์ ๋งค๋งค, ์๋๋
ธ๋, ๊ณ ๋ฌธ ๋ฑ์ ์ธ๊ถ์ ๋ฆฐ์ โ๊ณ ์๋ก ๋ฐฉ๊ดโํ๊ณ ์๋ค๊ณ ๋นํํ๋ค.
๋ํ ๋ฏธ ๊ตญ๋ฌด๋ถ๋ ์บ๋ณด๋์๋ฅผ 2025๋
์ต์ ์ธ์ ๋งค๋งค ๋ณด๊ณ ์์์ ์ธ์ ๋งค๋งค ํ์๊ตญ(state sponsor of human trafficking)์ผ๋ก ๋ช
์ํ์ผ๋ฉฐ, ๊ณ ์ ์บ๋ณด๋์ ๊ด๋ฆฌ๋ค์ด ์จ๋ผ์ธ ์ฌ๊ธฐ ์ด์์๋ค์ด ์ด์ฉํ๋ ๋ถ๋์ฐ์ ์์ ํ๊ณ ์๋ค๊ณ ์ง์ ํ๋ค.
์ฌ๊ธฐ๋ณตํฉ๋จ์ง๋ ์ฝ 300๊ณณ์ผ๋ก ์ถ์ฐ๋๋ฉฐ, ์ต๋ 20๋ง ๋ช
์ด ์ด๊ณณ์์ ๋
ธ๋ํ ์ ์๋ ๊ท๋ชจ๋ค. ํํธ ์บ๋ณด๋์์ ์๋ฅ ๋ฐ ์ฌ์ ์ฐ์
์ ์ฝ 100๋ง ๋ช
์ ๊ณ ์ฉํ๊ณ ์๋ค.
์ด ๋ณด๊ณ ์๋ฅผ ์์ฑํ ์ฐ๊ตฌ๊ธฐ๊ด์ธ Humanity Research Consultancy๋ ์บ๋ณด๋์ ์ง๋๋ถ์ ๊ตญ๊ฐ๊ธฐ๊ด์ด ์ด ์ฌ๊ธฐ์ฐ์
์ ์ฑ์ฅ, ์ง์์ฑ, ๋ฒ์์ โ๊น์ด ์ง์ ๊ด์ฌํ๋คโ๊ณ ๋ถ์ํ๋ค.
Sims๋ โ์ด๋ฒ ๊ธฐ์๋ Chen Zhi์ Prince๋ง์ ์ ์กฐ์คํ ๊ฒ์ด์ง๋ง, ๊ทธ ํจํด์ ๋ถ๋ช
ํ๋ค: ๊ฐ์ ๋
ธ๋ ์ฌ๊ธฐ๋ณตํฉ๋จ์ง 10๊ฐ๋ฅผ ์ธ์ฐ๊ณ ์์ญ์ต์ ์ด๋ํ๋ฉฐ ์ฑ
์์ ๋ฉด์ ๋ฐ๋ ๊ฒ์ ์ ์น์ ๋ณดํธ ์์ด๋ ์์ํ๊ธฐ ์ด๋ ต๋คโ๊ณ ๋งํ๋ค.
์ด ๋ฒ์ฃํ๋์ ์บ๋ณด๋์์์ ์๋ฏผ์ฌํ์ ๋
๋ฆฝ์ธ๋ก ์ด ์ต๊ทผ ๋ช ๋
๊ฐ ์์ ํ ํด์ฒด๋๋ฉด์ ๊ฑฐ์ ์ ์ง๋ฐ์ง ์๊ณ ์๋ค.
2024๋
10์, ์ฌ๊ธฐ๋ณตํฉ๋จ์ง๋ฅผ ํญ๋กํ ์ ๋ช
ํ ์บ๋ณด๋์ ์ธ๋ก ์ธ Mech Dara์ ์ฒดํฌ๋ ๊ตญ์ ์ ์ฐ๋ ค๋ฅผ ๋ถ๋ฌ์ผ์ผ์ผฐ๋ค.
โ์บ๋ณด๋์์ ์๋ฏผ์ฌํ๋ ์ฅ๋๋ฐญ์ด ๋์๋คโ๋ผ๊ณ ํ ๋จ์ฒด๋ ๋งํ๋ค. โ์ด ๋ฌธ์ ๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ํ๊ฑฐ๋ ์ ๊ธฐํ๋ ค๋ ์ฌ๋์ด ์๋ค๋ฉด ์ง๊ธ์ ์นจ๋ฌต๋นํ๋ค. ์ธ๋ก ๋, ์๋ฏผ์ฌํ๋ ์ด ์ฌ๊ธฐ๊ฒฝ์ ์ ์๋ ์ ์๋ค.โ
์บ๋ณด๋์ ์ ๋ถ๋ ์จ๋ผ์ธ ์ฌ๊ธฐ ์ฐ์
๊ณผ์ ์ด๋ ํ ์ฐ๊ณ๋ ๋ฐ๋ณตํด์ ๋ถ์ธํด ์์ผ๋ฉฐ, ์ด๋ฌ ์ด์๋ โ๋ชจ๋ ํํ์ ๊ตญ๊ฒฝ๊ฐ ๋ฒ์ฃ, ํนํ ์จ๋ผ์ธ ์ฌ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์๋ฐฉยท์ต์ ํ๊ฒ ๋คโ๊ณ ๋ฐํ ๋ฐ ์๋ค.
์ฌํด ์ด, Hun Manet ์ด๋ฆฌ๋ ์ฌ๊ธฐ๊พผ ๋จ์์ ์ํ ์์ํ๋ฅผ ์ค์นํ๋ค. ์ ๋ถ ๋ฐํ์ ๋ฐ๋ฅด๋ฉด ์ด ์์ํ๋ 20๊ฐ ๊ตญ์ ์ ํผ์์ 3,455๋ช
์ ์ฒดํฌํ๊ณ , ์กฐ์ง๋ฒ์ฃยท์ธ์ ๋งค๋งค ๋คํธ์ํฌ๋ ์ฌ๋ฌ ๊ฑด ์ ๋ฐํด ์ธ์ ๋งค๋งค ํผํด์๋ฅผ ๊ตฌ์กฐํ๋ค.
๋ด๋ฌด๋ถ ๋๋ณ์ธ Touch Sokhak๋ APํต์ ์ โ์ฐ๋ฆฌ๋ ๋ฒ์ ์๋ฐํ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ๋ณดํธํ์ง ์๋๋คโ๊ณ ํ๋ฉด์๋, ์ ๋ถ๊ฐ ์ค์ ๋ก๋ Prince Group์ด๋ Chen Zhi๋ฅผ ๋ฒ์ฃํ์๋ก ๊ธฐ์ํ์ง๋ ์์๋ค๊ณ ๊ฐ์กฐํ๋ค.
๋๋ณ์ธ์ ๋ํ ๋ด๋ฌด์ฅ๊ด Sar Sokha๊ฐ Jin Bei ์นด์ง๋
ธ ํ์ฌ์ ๊ณต๋ํฌ์ํ๋ค๋ ๋ณด๋๋ฅผ โ์ฌ์ค์ด ์๋๋คโ๋ผ๋ฉฐ ๋ฐ๋ฐํ๋ค. ํํธ ์บ๋ณด๋์ ์ค์์ํ์ Prince Group์ ๊ธ์ต์๋น์ค ๋ถ๋ฌธ์ธ Prince Bank๊ฐ โ์บ๋ณด๋์ ๋ฒ์ ์ค์ํ๋๋กโ ์ ์คํ ๋ชจ๋ํฐ๋งํ๊ณ ์กฐ์ฌ ์ค์ด๋ผ๊ณ ๋ฐํ๋ค. |