The Cambodian Interior Ministry announced that 2,044 foreigners were arrested on Saturday in a raid on a massive online fraud compound near the border with Vietnam — and 1,792 of them were Chinese nationals.
The Interior Ministry said the other detainees included 179 people from Myanmar, 177 from Vietnam, and 5 from Taiwan. A smattering of people from other unnamed Southeast Asian countries were also taken into custody.
The statement did not list the exact charges against the foreigners who were taken into custody, or if they would be extradited to their home countries.
Cambodia’s General Department of Immigration (GDI) said on Monday that 406 foreigners were deported through Techo International Airport, 140 of them Chinese. GDI did not publish much information about them, but Asian media reports said some of them were taken into custody at giant scam centers like the one raided on Saturday.
The target of the raid was a compound in Bavet, located in the province of Svay Rieng along the Vietnamese border. China’s state-run Xinhua news service described the compound as a “casino with 22 buildings.”
Interior Ministry spokesman Touch Sokhak said the raid demonstrates that Cambodia “is not a safe haven, but a hell, for criminals.”
“This truly reflects that the Cambodian government will never loosen its crackdowns on online scam criminals,” he vowed.
The Cambodian National Police released copious photos of the raid, which they said was conducted by “approximately 700 skilled personnel.”
China has lately been pressuring Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations to crack down on scam centers, which human-rights groups claim have long been ignored or indulged by host governments even though they employ slave labor and use torture to keep their workers in line.
The scam centers are extremely profitable for the gangsters that run them, harvesting billions of dollars in illicit income. Cambodia in particular has become a “scam state” with a substantial portion of its total national income coming from online and telecom fraud operations.
The crackdown seems to be having an effect as the UK Guardian reported last week that scam centers are beginning to shut down voluntarily and release thousands of indentured workers.
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