EYES OFF CAMBODIA?
More complex security issues swirl in Myanmar, making it more difficult for its neighbours to make a dent in the crime groups thriving amid instability.
China still has a sizeable problem on its southern border with Myanmar; regions that are largely controlled by militias remain havens for scamming.
The vast majority of Chinese nationals identified as missing people in Myanmar were taken across the international divide from Yunnan and Guangxi, not from Thailand, according to analysis from USIP.
And while Beijing has cooperated with the State Administrative Council, the junta’s governing arm, to crack down on these crimes, the muddled nature of control there is making the situation complicated, Lin said.
Through proxies and networks with ethnic rebel groups inside Myanmar, Beijing has shaped multiple offensives against scamming compound operations there.
It is an ally of the SAC, but the junta’s role in illicit activities is another factor causing a “lack of trust”, said Lin.
“We know that the Chinese government really needs the cooperation from the military junta. But then, on the other hand, there are groups that are linked to the military junta that are supporting these scam operations,” she said.
With Beijing’s eye on negotiations and operations with various militias in disparate parts of Myanmar, experts agreed the scamming business is going largely unchecked elsewhere – namely in Cambodia, where more than 150,000 people are estimated by aid organisation USAID to be ensnared by the scamming industry, generating some US$12.5 billion annually, according to USIP.
That growing figure means scamming now generates more revenue than Cambodia’s otherwise largest export industry, garments. It is worth nearly four times that of the tourism sector in the country.
Southern told CNA that his monitoring of chat groups used by syndicates in recent weeks revealed criminal actors are actively seeking to shift more operations from Myanmar to Cambodia, where scrutiny is lower and crime groups work without fear of being shut down.
“The only place in the region where they tend to just be operating out in the open, in the middle of the capital city, is in Cambodia,” he said after multiple investigations of various compounds throughout the country, including in Phnom Penh.
“Without the Chinese pressure to crack down right now, it’s just growing at an alarming rate here,” he said.
While the government has created task forces, assisted efforts to rescue hundreds of individuals on the Thai-Cambodian border last month and amended legislation to tighten rules on gambling, experts say criminal activity continues to flourish.
“The criminal actors now have so much influence in Cambodia that basically they’ve become untouchable,” Tower claimed.
The Cambodian government denies it is a haven for syndicate activity, blaming foreign media and NGOs for painting a bad image of the country.
A US state department report last year found that Cambodian officials were “undermining anti-trafficking law enforcement and victim protection efforts and dispelling reported accusations through minimisation and denial in public messaging of the prevalence and severity of online scam operations, including reports of government complicity”.
But Chou Bun Eng, permanent vice-chair of Cambodia’s National Committee for Counter Trafficking, has told local media on several occasions that at least 80 percent of reported human trafficking cases investigated by authorities were false.
