០៨ មិថុនា ២០២៥ / 08 June 2025
ក្រុមឧក្រិដ្ឋជនចិន ជាអ្នកជួយឲ្យរបប ហ៊ុន សែន នៅរស់មានជីវិត ពីព្រោះអង្គការ ចោរធំក្រៅស្រុក ត្រូវការឲ្បរបបចោរាធិបតេយ្យនៅកម្ពុជា ផ្តល់កន្លែងសុវត្ថិភាព (ទីជំរក) ឲ្យពួកវា។
HOW THE CHINESE MAFIA KEEPS CAMBODIA'S HUN SEN REGIME AFLOAT
Conservative estimates place annual revenue generated by regional scam syndicates between $50 and 75 billion. This makes transnational fraud perhaps the most dominant economic activity in the entire Mekong sub-region—equivalent to nearly half of total GDP in the primary host countries.
Regional elites are implicated neck deep.
The unprecedented centrality of the state-crime nexus in this problem-set is revealing gaps in the ability of conventional diplomatic engagement to achieve foreign policy objectives or ensure domestic security.
While Myanmar and Laos boast towering scam economies, one country stands above its peers in terms of likely scale and long-run durability: Cambodia.
Cambodia is likely the absolute global epicenter of next-gen transnational fraud in 2025 and is certainly the country most primed for explosive growth going forward.
Scamming has become an enormously profitable domestic industry, likely unparalleled in the Kingdom’s history. Formal estimates range from $12.5 to $19 billion dollars per year, equivalent to as much as 60% of GDP and significantly eclipsing the country’s largest formal sector, the garment and textiles industry.
Eendemic corruption, reliable protection by the government, and co-perpetration by party elites are the primary enablers of Cambodia’s trafficking-cybercrime nexus and pose the chief barriers to combating the industry’s explosive growth.
Cambodian state institutions systematically and insidiously support and protect the criminal networks involved in transnational fraud and related human trafficking.
Vertically integrated criminal industries are in no way at odds with or subversive to the CPP’s ruling strategy. Rather, elite criminality is a core feature of the ruling party’s DNA, and scamming is simply the newest and most profitable iteration.
Cambodia’s extreme dependence on criminally derived profits as a patrimonial resource is a long-documented feature of the formation and remarkable durability of the CPP. Transnational fraud is one of Cambodia’s many state-abetted criminal interests—but its staggering scale and profitability have rendered this industry particularly important to the CPP’s ruling strategy.
The CPP maintains power not thanks to popular consent to its legitimacy, but due to a highly effective and pragmatic suppression of domestic dissent. This coercive function is monetized and sustained by the extractive and predatory activities (chief among them, scam profits) of a consolidated elite patronage network. This network—tightly controlled by former Prime Minister Hun Sen and his family—purchases the loyalty of the state’s security forces, preempting the emergence of (1) any meaningful opposition to an unpopular ruling strategy and (2) any momentum for reforms, as either pose existential threats to the ruling coalition’s grip on power.
The Cambodian state-party faces new external threats, as the harms of its transnational cybercrime industry are felt globally. So far, it has mostly deflected these via manipulation of geopolitical power struggles, public misinformation campaigns, and repression of activists.
In the CPP’s scam-trafficking era, the state-party has leveraged its full resources to (1) shield its perpetrators from transnational accountability, (2) deflect and obscure the nature of its criminal activities and culpability, and (3) silence local voices who pose threats to the industry.
The significant influx of sophisticated Chinese criminals in recent decades has injected new capacity and capital into Cambodia’s state-abetted criminal undertakings. But this has not undermined Cambodia’s existing power structures—the Cambodian People’s Party remains firmly in the driver’s seat and is principally culpable for the country’s degraded trajectory.
As criminals were pushed out by reforms in China and pulled in by the gravitational force of Cambodia’s fully criminalized political-economic environment, their presence and capital infusion has served to ossify CPP dominance.
Cambodia’s gambling sector and financial system have anything but an ambiguous relationship with the industry. Cambodia’s gambling sector serves as an industrial scale “mixer” that systematically cleans an incredible volume of illicit money and launders it into Cambodia’s profoundly compromised formal financial sector. Additionally, Cambodia maintains strong advantages as a transnational cybercrime host country, thanks to the country’s dollarized economy.
The Chinese-imported criminal class primarily serves as a source of extralegal capital and talent for the regime. However, the increasing economic dependence of Cambodia’s ruling elite on a sophisticated class of criminals presents the possibility of a fundamental shift in the relationship, and this dependence carries its own kind of strategic risks that affect the broader international order based on rules and norms.
(Ends)
The above text ia a short summary of the following document:
Policies and Patterns
State-Abetted Transnational Crime in Cambodia as a Global Security Threat
By Jacob Simms
May 2025
Humanity Research Consultancy
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/.../68264cff356caba111...
Khmer
English
French
