On January 7, Cambodian authorities announced they had detained and deported Chen Zhi, founder and former chairman of Prince Group, a multinational conglomerate accused of fronting a global multibillion-dollar fraud operation.
Chen, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Hun Sen, became a key figure in a joint US-UK response last year when he was personally indicted for wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges and included in an unprecedented sanctions program targeting the Prince Group and other organized crime syndicates in Southeast Asia.
Chen’s arrest — and his subsequent extradition to China — surprised many because he had such powerful backers in Phnom Penh. He held the government’s bestowed honorific neak oknha, meaning “prominent tycoon”, and had long been allowed to operate largely unrestrained at the head of a burgeoning network of scam centers.
Despite long-standing promises by the Hun regime, now led by Hun Sen’s son, Prime Minister Hun Manet, to tackle cybercrime within Cambodia’s borders, Chen proved untouchable, even as NGOs and cybercrime experts repeatedly called for action against the Prince Group in recent years.
This raises questions about why the regime chose to intervene only now, months after Western demands, and why it handed Chen over to Chinese authorities rather than to countries with active warrants for his arrest, including the US and UK.
Until recently, Chen lived as a free man in Cambodia. The regime continued to shelter him and deflect investigations into his business dealings, apparently to avoid disclosing the tycoon’s location.
Calls for action following the October 2025 sanctions and charges package were ignored despite intensifying Western pressure. This included a report accusing the Cambodian government of colluding in human trafficking for the cybercrime operations and the introduction of a US bill naming several high-ranking Cambodian officials as complicit in the operation of scam syndicates.
The reluctance to act in the face of clear evidence suggests that Chen’s detention and deportation were less about tackling cybercrime and more a response to shifting geopolitical developments.
Indeed, the decision to deport Chen came just days after the brazen extraction of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to the US on narco-terrorism charges. While observers continue to debate the legality of that intervention and its implications for other Latin American countries, the message was clear: Donald Trump’s America is willing and able to enter foreign territory to apprehend individuals it deems a threat to US national security.
While Chen is a far lower-profile figure than Maduro, his operations through the Prince Group have undermined US economic and security interests. In an industry dominated by individuals close to ruling elites, allowing Chen to fall into US custody — where he could potentially disclose incriminating evidence about the players, enablers and transnational nature of scam networks — was a risk Phnom Penh was unwilling to take.
That is especially true given that cyber scams are estimated to generate revenue equivalent to 30.2% of Cambodia’s formal GDP. As Cambodia seeks to secure its illicit revenue stream, the decision to deport Chen to China — a country that claims to have solved 285,000 online fraud cases in 2025 and cracked down on responsible groups — may initially appear unusual.
However, a November report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said China has “selectively cracked down on scam centers that target Chinese victims, leading Chinese criminal organizations to conclude that they can make greater profits with lower risk by targeting the United States instead.”
It also suggested that scam centers are used as a pretext for expanding China’s security presence and influence in the region. Given the scale of the problem, it is not difficult to see why some governments may turn to China for assistance.
Cybercrime in East and Southeast Asia was estimated at nearly $40 billion in 2023, with Cambodia accounting for $12.5 billion alone. Some ASEAN nations, such as Malaysia, lost more than 1.22 billion ringgit ($300 million) to cybercrime in just 10 months of 2024, while Indonesia recorded 3.6 billion scam attacks in the first seven months of 2025.
While regional efforts have had substantial impact — including the release of about 7,000 of the estimated 120,000 victims held in Myanmar alone in February last year — many of those behind the industry remain untouched.
A recent UN Office on Drugs and Crime report found weak governance and high levels of corruption allow the industry to thrive. The Hun regime has long been linked to cyber syndicates, with several individuals named in the US Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act (H.R.5490) being deputy prime ministers, ministers and advisors to the government. The October sanctions demonstrated that such actors can be identified and targeted.
The Hun regime is no doubt watching closely who may face charges or even extradition next — and responding accordingly. ASEAN leaders cannot afford to let Beijing or Phnom Penh determine who is held accountable for scam center crimes and losses and which countries’ economic and human losses are deemed acceptable.
As a regional bloc, ASEAN must push for coordinated action against those responsible. That will require more than statements. It demands coordinated diplomacy, targeted sanctions and multinational law enforcement efforts —all calibrated to avoid overt interference but robust enough to deter criminal elites from using state cover as protection.
Samady Ou is a Cambodian youth activist, Human Rights Foundation Freedom Fellow, and youth ambassador for the Khmer Movement for Democracy.
Maybe the US regime is perceived to be unreliable and pursuing political goals rather than criminal activities.
There seems to be protests across America regarding the federal Brown shirts.