Nation: Cambodia

Chinese Name: 凯旋城
Location: Otres, Sangkat Muoy, Sihanoukville, Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia.

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What Do We Know about K99 Group?

K99 Group is a Cambodian gambling junket operator owned by Rithy Raksmei, a well-connected Cambodian businessman. It runs gaming tables at numerous casinos, several of which are linked to companies implicated in online scam operations. It also has developments of its own that are reportedly linked to online scam operations and rights abuses.

K99 Group owns two adjacent buildings in the area of Otres commonly referred to as ‘Chinatown’ (中国城). This zone includes the Jinshui and Kaibo compounds, well-documented sites for online gambling and scam operators where numerous reports indicate workers have been subject to violence and held under conditions often amounting to bonded labour. The wider Chinatown area has become associated with frequent reports of serious, and often violent, crime. A review of crime reports in Sihanoukville by Voice of Democracy (VOD) in early 2022 found cases of abandoned bodies, homicides, assaults, firearms, extortion, and detention, many of which occurred in the Chinatown area. For a more detailed discussion of conditions in compounds within the Chinatown zone, see the profiles for Kaibo (here) and Jinshui (here).

K99 Group also has a large compound northeast of the Chinatown area. This compound is called Triumph City (凯旋城) in some reports and Arc De Triomphe in others. The compound appeared in a documentary released by Al Jazeera in July 2022, which included testimony from a person who claimed he was sold to a compound with the signage of K99 Group. Video in the documentary shows this was the Triumph City compound, surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. The interviewee claimed that on his first day there he saw one man severely beaten, and that he was resold to another scam operator the next day.

In September 2022, ProPublica published an in-depth report on the online scam industry, speaking with several survivors. This included one 22-year-old man who ended up in a scamming compound in 2021 after responding to a job in marketing with a delivery company in Cambodia. The job turned out to be fake and, along with his brother, he eventually found himself in White Sand Palace, a notorious scam operation (see profile here). A few weeks after arriving there, they were sold to another scam compound: Triumph City. When they asked to leave, they were told they would have to pay a ransom of US$11,700. In his four months at the compound, he never stepped outside the heavily guarded gates.

In January 2022, he messaged the governor of Preah Sihanouk province on Facebook, and received a response asking for his phone number, after which the police called him. His bosses found out and chastised him, then made his brother record a videotaped confession on behalf of them both in which he said they owed money to the company due to a ‘personal loan’ and apologised to the governor. He was slapped by his boss and told that that if he was killed in the compound nobody would care. Due to their ‘troublemaker’ status they were sold to an operator in Phnom Penh, increasing their release fee to US$15,500 each. The man eventually managed to run away from this company, and his brother called the police who secured his release as well, but not before being forced to write a letter, seen by ProPublica, stating he had borrowed US$31,000 from the company, was happy and working voluntarily, and had not been kidnapped or beaten. As of September 2022, he was waiting to return to China.

Several media reports state that the Triumph City development area is 10 hectares, but ads on the K99 Group Facebook say it is 18 hectares. Construction broke ground in 2019, and at the time of writing in August 2022 was partially complete. The original project plans were for a US$70-million, 36-building residential and integrated commercial complex. Images published by the company show a modern self-contained development. A news report posted on the company Facebook page states that the project is developed in partnership with a Chinese company but does not specify its name. In 2019, K99 Group advertised property within the development for rent at US$12.80 per square metre per month. These ads stated that residential, hotel, and entertainment space is available, all within a gated area. As is the case in compounds like Jinshui (here) and Kaibo (here), it is likely that K99 Group rented space in the compound to various online companies who operate their businesses within.

The map below shows the location of the K99 Group properties in relation to the ‘Chinatown’ area of Otres.

In addition to the K99 Group properties that are reportedly linked to online crime, the company has business relationships with a number of casinos that are also implicated in the online crime industry or at least operating from buildings where online crime groups are also reportedly present. They include Nanhai Pearl Hotel (see profile here) and Bolai Casino (see profile here).

The group also runs online gambling. One website that appears to be linked to the company, under the name ‘K99 Win’, and bearing the K99 Group logo, provides online gambling for a range of games and sports, including cock fighting, which is illegal in Cambodia. Its home page asks users to select their country, one option being China, where online gambling is illegal. It is not clear where the site is run from, but its menu screen includes an image of the Xihu Resort Hotel (returned to below).

After many months of denying that illegal confinement was happening in Cambodian scam compounds, a nationwide crackdown on ‘illegal’ gambling commenced in August 2022. This resulted in raids of various gambling locations, including small local gambling rooms and a handful of major compounds that were known to be running illegal online gambling and/or scam operations. Soon after, official statements on the online compounds shifted drastically, and officials began to admit that human trafficking and detention were happening, and that as many as 100,000 people may be involved in ‘illegal gambling’ (officials still appear reluctant to acknowledge that many operations are in fact conducting online fraud). In Sihanoukville, 10 compounds were raided, while others were tipped off that raids were coming, or simply told to stop operating. An exodus of workers from Sihanoukville occurred, with reports that some people moved to compounds in other parts of the country.

In mid-September 2022, rumours began to circulate of a coming raid on compounds in the Chinatown area. The following day, Cambodia News Today gained access to the Kaibo and Jinshui compounds and saw most people had left, with vehicles loaded with furniture ready to depart. A source told the paper that the provincial government had issued instructions that all compounds are required to open their gates, remove barbed wire, take bars down from windows, and knock down walls in some cases. The reporter visited the Triumph City compound and saw that the gates were open and barbed wire removed but was denied access by security guards.

Despite the crackdown, media reports indicate that the compound continued to house people involved in online activities. According to a report in VietnamPlus, an outlet owned by Vietnam’s state news agency, on 24 October 2022, the Cambodian police inspected K99 Group and found 65 Vietnamese nationals who had either illegally entered or remained in Cambodia and were illegally working for the company. According to the media report, the people were deceived into ‘high paying’ jobs in Cambodia and forced to work in fraud operations.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to K99 Group?

The key actor behind K99 Group is Cambodian national Rithy Raksmei. Rithy Raksmei is the brother of the late Rithy Samnang, who himself was the son-in-law of Senator Kok An. Kok An and Rithy Samnang are linked to the Kaibo scam complex in the ‘Chinatown’ area of Otres (profiled here). Although they do not appear on K99 Group company registration records, both Rithy Samnang and Kok An have appeared at numerous K99 Group events.

K99 Group: A Charitable Company

K99 Group has made considerable donations to government and security forces. This includes donations of vehicles and supplies to the national and provincial gendarmerie (which are involved in law enforcement operations targeting scam compounds) and the Sihanoukville city jail (which houses people arrested for crimes related to these compounds). The company has also made donations to the Cambodian Red Cross in Sihanoukville and at the national level.

The company has also made donations to the gendarmerie and police in Malai District, Banteay Meanchey. Malai District borders Thailand and is close to the city of Poipet, where Kok An operates casinos under the Crown brand.

Rithy Raksmei: A Well-connected Businessman 

Rithy Raksmei has been photographed numerous times with the Chinese-born businessman Dong Lecheng (董勒成), the founder and chairman of Yunnan Jingcheng Group Co., Ltd. (云南景成集团有限公司), headquartered in Ruili City, Yunnan Province. Dong Lecheng is behind the Golden Sun Sky development which is adjacent to the notorious Jinshui (金水) compound (profiled here). Reporting on the situation at Chinatown in April 2022, a now-deleted article in the Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报) quoted an ‘insider’ who said Dong was also linked to Kaibo (profiled here). In the 2000s, Dong Lecheng was found guilty of involvement in illegal gambling and has been implicated in numerous criminal cases since then. However, Dong has denied any link to criminal activity in Cambodia. Dong is discussed in more detail here. 

Among the many documented instances where Rithy Raksmei has associated with Dong Lecheng was as part of a high-level Cambodian delegation that travelled to Ruili, Yunnan, to the headquarters of Jingcheng Group in 2019. Led by Chea Sophara (Minister for Land) and Hun Mana (Hun Sen’s daughter), the delegation also included Dy Vichea (Hun Mana’s husband, Deputy Chief of Police, and head of the General Department of Internal Security), Chea Sophamden (daughter of Chea Sophara), Yim Leang (husband of Chea Sophamaden, son of Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly, brother-in-law of Hun Many), Meas Sopherith (an army general and son of General Meas Sophea) and the vice president of Cambodia’s powerful Canadia Bank. Also present on this trip was the brother of Rithy Raksmei, Rithy Samnang (who prior to his death was closely connected to the Kaibo development).

Dong Lecheng’s signature project in Cambodia is a major hotel and casino development in the Otres beach area of Sihanoukville. This is centred around a massive hotel and entertainment building, flanked by numerous apartment blocks, including Jinshui (see profile here). While the central casino building has stalled and is not yet open, several surrounding buildings are now known to be scam and online gambling complexes. The broader development is referred to by several names in different reports, including the Jingcheng Tourism Complex (景成旅游综合体项目), Golden Sun Sky, Haoli Tourism Complex (昊利旅游综合体), and Cheerful Bay (悦海湾). The locally registered company that is the public face of the development is Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Co., Ltd. which was established by Dong Lecheng in 2017. In Chinese the company is called Haoli Entertainment Co., Ltd. (昊利娱乐有限公司). The central hotel and casino building is known as the Harbour Hotel, or Haigang Hotel in Chinese (海港大酒店).

In 2018, Dong Lecheng signed an agreement with Rithy Raksmei to sell ‘Jingcheng Tourism Complex No. 1 and No. 2 apartment buildings’. When visiting the area in June 2022, the authors observed a pair of buildings directly next to the Haigang Hotel that carry the logo of the K99 Group company.

On 12 April 2023, a new casino and hotel were opened in the two buildings purchased by Rithy Raksmei. The two drab buildings bearing the K99 company logo in the slideshow above have now been renovated and painted white and yellow. The buildings now house the Khemarak Hotel, or Kaina Hotel (凯娜酒店) in Chinese, and the Xing Tian Di Casino (星天地娱乐城). Xing Tian Di Co., Ltd. received a licence for the casino in September 2022. The company chair is Rithy Raksmei (according to Cambodia’s business registry as of April 2023).

At the opening ceremony, the group that cut the ribbon included K99 Group’s Rithy Raksmei, Lieutenant-General Sao Sokha (head of Cambodia’s national gendarmerie and deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces) and Preah Sihanouk Governor Kuoch Chamroeun. Deputy Governor Man Sineth and head of Preah Sihanouk Military Police Heng Bunthy were also present. At a reception held that evening to celebrate the launch, Lieutenant-General Sao Sokha, the governor and his deputy were joined by Senator Kok An (mentioned elsewhere in this profile).

Links with Suncity Group and Golden Sun Sky Entertainment

In 2018, a subsidiary of the Macau-based Hong Kong-listed junket operator Suncity Group Holdings Ltd signed an agreement via subsidiary Suncity Group Management and Consultancy (Sihanoukville) Ltd. to offer consultancy and management services to Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Co., Ltd. The project investment was reported to be US$360 million and included casinos, tourism, and property developments. Under the agreement, Suncity would provide advice and management services for Golden Sun Sky’s casino resort project, while cooperating on projects to explore new markets. The signing ceremony was attended by Rithy Raksmei, Senator Ly Yong Phat, and Senator Kok An.

At the time this deal was signed, Suncity Group Holdings was chaired by Alvin Chau (Cheok Wa Chau / Zhou Zhuohua / 周焯華). In 2019, Australian media reported that Chau had been banned from entering Australia due to links to ‘large-scale money-laundering activities’ and current or past links to the 14K triad—formerly led by ‘Broken Tooth’ Wan Kuok-koi, who is also active in Cambodia. In 2019, Chinese state media ran a report accusing Chau of running a multi-billion-dollar online gaming operation from Cambodia and the Philippines that illegally targeted mainland China. Suncity denied that Chau had been investigated in Australia for triad links.

In November 2021, the Wenzhou City Public Security Bureau issued a warrant for Alvin Chau’s arrest. He was arrested in late 2021 and his trial began in Macau in September 2022. Among the charges he faces, he is accused of running a massive illegal online and proxy betting operation that allowed Suncity VIP Room account holders to place bets online or by phone in VIP lounges it set up in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. He was sentenced to 18 years in jail in January 2023 on over 100 charges, including organised crime and illegal gaming. Suncity had VIP gaming rooms at the Xigang International Casino, which is located inside the Xi-Hu Resort Hotel. Xi-Hu is owned by the same people who operate the Nanhai Hotel, which is reported to house scam operations (profiled here).

In November 2021, a new part of the Golden Sun Sky development was launched. The Beach Club project is a large villa and adjoined pier that sits on the stretch of beach in front of the Haigang Hotel. The ribbon was cut by Dong Lecheng and several officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Mem Sam An and Preah Sihanouk Governor Kuoch Chamroeun. The governor and his deputy, Long Dimanche, along with senators Ly Yong Phat and Kok An, joined on the stage later in the day, as did Rithy Raksmei. Provincial police, gendarmerie, and court officials were also in attendance.

The map below shows the ‘Chinatown’ area in full, with Kaibo and the various Jincheng-linked components identified, and K99 Group properties highlighted in purple.

K99 Group’s Casino Junket Business

As noted earlier, K99 Group is a junket operator and has links to several casinos in Sihanoukville. The most prominent links are with the Xihu Resort Hotel (西湖度假酒店) and Nanhai Pearl Hotel (南海明珠酒店公寓), which share the same owners. Xihu features prominently in K99 Group materials and is used as the cover image on K99 Group’s Facebook page. The Xihu Resort Hotel houses the Xigang International Casino (西港国际娱乐城), where K99 Group has VIP rooms. K99 Group also has a counter at the Nanhai Pearl Hotel to service its gambling customers. Nanhai has reportedly been connected to online scam operations and abuses, as profiled here. As noted above, Suncity Group also operated VIP tables at Xihu Resort Hotel.

K99 Group also has links to Bolai Casino (铂莱国际娱乐, see profile here) and White Sand Casino (白沙皇宫, profile here). Promotional posts on the K99 Group Facebook page indicate that K99 Group runs junkets via VIP rooms at these casinos. These casinos have featured in media reporting in 2022, specifically:

• Bolai (known as ‘Brilliancy’ in English) is located in the Ochheuteal beach area. In June 2022, Cambodian and Thai police jointly searched the Bolai building seeking to execute Thai arrest warrants for operators of a fraud scheme targeting people in Thailand. However, no arrests were made on that occasion. This was reported by Voice of Democracy and in Thai papers Bangkok Post (which misspelled Bolai as Po Lai), and The Nation (which did not name Bolai, but included a photo of the building).

• White Sand has featured in numerous reports linked to online scams and detention of workers. Reports by China’s Beijing Youth Daily and Southern Weekly (南方周末) both identified White Sand as a site of online crime. The Al Jazeera documentary released in July 2022 includes an interview with a 16-year-old girl who says she was sold to White Sand. She said that upper levels of the hotel were closed off and occupied by scam operations, that she witnessed violence and beating of workers occurring there, and was subject to sexual harassment. There are also reports in Chinese language media of people who claim they were sold to White Sand, including one man who says he was beaten and chained for three days and nights after refusing to work (this is discussed in more detail in the White Sand profile here).

In June 2022, the companies that own Xihu Resort, Nanhai Pearl, and Bolai Casino had their casino licenses renewed by Cambodia’s gaming commission.

Location of K99 Group Properties

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

K99 Group owns two buildings in the Chinatown area of Otres, purchased from Dong Lecheng. These buildings are close to the Jinshui compound (see profile here), which is part of the area developed by Dong’s Jingcheng Group. Rithy Raksmei has appeared at multiple events, including deal signings, involving Dong Lecheng.

The Kaibo compound (see profile here), also in the Chinatown area, is linked to Rithy Raksmei’s late brother, Rithy Samnang, and his father-in-law, Senator Kok An. Rithy Raksmei appeared on stage at the ground-breaking of a new KB property development.

Kok An and Rithy Samnang are connected to the Crown High-Tech Industrial Park compound (see profile here), where reports have found people held and forced to work in scam operations.

K99 Group runs VIP tables and/or junkets at Nanhai Pearl Hotel, White Sand Casino and Bolai Casino (see profiles here, here, and here), all of which have been implicated in reporting on online crime. Rithy Samnang was also director of a company with Myanmar national Aik Paung, who is involved in Nanhai Pearl Hotel.

Updates & Corrections

25 February 2023: Verdict from Alvin Chau criminal trial added.

23 April: Added information on the opening of Khemarak Hotel and Xing Tian Di Casino in the Chinatown development area.

K99 Group in the News

2022

31 October: ‘在西港K99园区从事电诈 65名越南人被遣返回国 [65 Vietnamese Deported for Fraudulent Activities in K99 Park in Sihanoukville].’ 柬中时报 [Cambodia-China Times]. Link.

Cambodian Chinese-language media reports on coverage from Vietnamese media that 67 Vietnamese nationals deported from Cambodia via Ha Tien border crossing, 65 of which were engaged in online fraud at the K99 compound in Sihanoukville.

28 October: Lê Sen. ‘Kiên Giang: Tiếp nhận thêm công dân Việt Nam trở về từ Campuchia [Kien Giang: Receiving More Vietnamese Citizens Returning From Cambodia].’ VietnamPlus. Link.

Vietnamese media reports that 67 nationals who had been deceived into work in Cambodia and forced to work in fraud operations return to Vietnam. This included 65 people found by police at K99 Triumph City in October. 

19 September: Huang, Yan 黄岩. ‘独家重磅！西港中国城凯博金水全部对外开放 [Exclusive! Sihanoukville Chinatown Kaibo and Jinshui Are Fully Open to the Public].’ 今日柬闻 [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Chinese reporter gains access to the Chinatown compounds after the worker exodus and observes an ‘abandoned town’. On visiting Triumph City, the reporter finds the gate open and barbed wire taken down, but was still denied access by security guards.

13 September: Podkul, Cezary and Cindy Liu, contributions from Mech Dara, Danielle Keeton-Olsen, and Salina Li. ‘Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims Into Cyberscamming.’ ProPublica. Link.

An in-depth investigation into the cyber-scamming industry, the techniques it uses to scam people, and how it ensnares and enslaves workers. Includes testimony from a man held at Triumph City with his brother.

 11 August: 101 East. ‘Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves.’ Al Jazeera. Link.

 Longform article focusing on the victims highlighted in below documentary. Includes two people sold to Kaibo.

 14 July: 101 East. ‘Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves.’ Al Jazeera. Link.

Documentary on some of the main scam compounds located in Sihanoukville and Pursat. Includes testimony from a person who claims he was sold to K99 Group’s Triumph City compound.

24 June: Mech, Dara and Jintamas Saksornchai. ‘Sihanoukville Crime: 5 Arrested for Dealing Guns, 21 Thais Removed from Scams.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

21 Thais arrested after raids by Cambodian and Thai police. People were arrested based on Thai arrest warrants for public fraud, illegal assembly and money laundering. Operation included raid of Bolai Casino.

23 July: ‘21 Nabbed after Allegedly Romancing Victims and Defrauding Them of Millions.’ The Nation. Link.

Executing Thai arrest warrants, Cambodian police work with Thai counterparts to raid several properties. Pictures Bolai Casino, although no arrests made at that location.

11 July: Wassayos Ngamkham. ‘Dozens of Thais arrested in call-centre raids in Cambodia.’ Bangkok Post. Link.

Executing Thai arrest warrants, Cambodian police work with Thai counterparts to raid several properties. Includes Bolai Casino (misspelled ‘Po Lai’), although no arrests made at that location.

 1 April: Li, Yiming 李一鸣. ‘难以逃离的柬埔寨西港“中国城” ：被绑架被倒卖，被威胁“沉尸海底”….. [The “China Town” in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, That is Difficult to Escape: Kidnapped, Resold, Threatened to “Sink the corpse to the Bottom of the Sea” …].’ 北京青年报 [Beijing Youth Daily]. Link.

Newspaper of Beijing’s Communist Youth League reports on the situation in Chinatown, Sihanoukville, documenting the testimony of people held in the Kaibo and Jinshui compounds. Includes discussion of Dong Lecheng’s past legal issues in China. (Note: Article was removed from the internet around August 2022 but at the time of writing remains available on some websites not based in China.)

11 March: Mech, Dara and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘Crimes in Shadows: Sihanoukville’s Grisly Reports, Pressure on Journalists.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Review of crime reports in Sihanoukville from past two years include six cases of bodies found in public locations or washed up on the beach, 19 homicides, assaults, and firearms cases, 11 cases of extortion and detention, along with other serious crimes. Includes serious crimes in Chinatown area.

19 February: World Journal. ‘逼網詐？男被囚柬埔寨黑屋 拷鐵架床3天3夜 [Forced Online Fraud? Man Imprisoned in Cambodian Dark Room Handcuffed to an Iron-frame Bed for Three Days and Three Nights].’ 世界新闻网 [World Journal]. Link.

Report on man who claims he was kidnapped and taken to White Sand. When he refused to do online fraud work, he was beaten and tied to a bed for three days.

18 February : Mech, Dara, Cindy Liu, and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘Victims Allege Sihanoukville Precincts with Ties to Major Businesses Are Sites of Scams, Torture, Detention.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Reports of cases forced labour and human trafficking connected to scam compounds in Sihanoukville, including those located in Chinatown.

17 February: Gu, Yuebing 顾月冰. ‘逃离柬埔寨“网赌之城” [Escape from Cambodia’s “City of Online Casinos”].’ 南方周末 [Southern Weekly]. Link.

Chinese media reports on the scale of online scams operating from Sihanoukville and the conditions in which people are forced to work. Names several compounds as sites for online scam companies, including ‘Chinatown’ area of Otres.

Chinese Name: 凱博
Location: Otres Beach, Sangkat Buon, Sihanoukville, Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia.

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What Do We Know about Kaibo?

The Kaibo development is a massive complex of over 20 buildings sitting a few hundred metres from Otres Beach and located directly northeast of another notorious compound, Jinshui (金水, see profile here). Together this area is commonly referred to as ‘Chinatown’ (中国城).

The Chinatown area has featured in Cambodia-based Chinese language media for some time, but it first came to the attention of English-speaking audiences in July 2021, when the husband of a Philippines national reported that his wife was being held against her will in a complex in the area. On arriving in Sihanoukville after responding to a Facebook job recruitment post, the woman had her passport confiscated and was forbidden to leave. Only after the media covered the story was she finally released. It appears that she was held in the nearby Jinshui compound, but the story brought attention to Chinatown as a whole, and since then there has been ongoing coverage of fraud and online gambling operations, forced labour, and violent crime throughout the area.

Following these reports, in September 2021 the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh released a statement:

Our embassy has noticed that media publications in recent days have exposed the existence of illegal and criminal activities including online gambling, fraud, illegal detention, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, and drug trafficking in the ‘Chinatown’ area of Sihanoukville. The victims involved are citizens of many countries, most of them Chinese. Our embassy attaches great importance to this and is maintaining close communication with the Cambodian side.

The statement went on to say that China and Cambodia maintain high-level law enforcement cooperation, and that the two sides were in communication, making every effort to ‘eliminate numerous obstacles’, and would launch a joint crackdown as soon as possible.

According to media reports, units within Kaibo were rented to companies running a range of online gambling and fraud operations. The connection between this compound and online scams was explicitly made by the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly (南方周末), which in early 2022 published a dramatic piece of reporting titled ‘Escape from Cambodia’s “City of Online Casinos”’. The article identified numerous locations in Sihanoukville where online scam companies operated ‘hidden’ within, including the so-called Kaibo Chinatown (凯博中国城). Former captives from the Kaibo complex told the authors in 2022 that although different operators control activities in different buildings, they used a Telegram group to share information.

According to numerous media articles and social media postings, people who worked in Kaibo have claimed that failure to perform could result in brutal beatings, and that requests to leave were denied unless individuals pay fees of thousands of dollars. While some have willingly gone to work at Kaibo, others ended up there after responding to deceptive job ads; others again claim to have been kidnapped. In February 2022, Voice of Democracy (VOD) interviewed one survivor who said he was kidnapped at knife point while walking along a road at night in Sihanoukville and then sold to a scam operation in White Sand Palace 2 (see profile here), after which he was sold to another operator at ‘Kaibo Building 5’. A documentary by Al Jazeera released in July 2022 also includes testimony from a person who claims that he was held at ‘Kaibo 5’ building. Taiwan media reported in August 2022 the story of one woman who was trafficked by brokers in Taiwan, and ended up in ‘Building 13, Kaibo Park, Chinatown’ (中国城凯博园区13栋). After she entered the park, she was not allowed to leave. She claimed that the company holding her had 50 employees, both from mainland China and Taiwan. She was released within three days after appealing for help and paying a fee of US$5,000.

Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), the newspaper of Beijing’s Communist Youth League, reported on the situation at Chinatown in April 2022, stating that, unlike in normal residential compounds, here the security guards’ job is to ‘strictly prevent the employees of the online investment company from fleeing without permission’. The newspaper also told the story of an individual who was sold to White Sand and then on to Kaibo, where each floor had a ‘small black room’ (小黑屋) where electric batons, ropes, and handcuffs were stored, and uncooperative people were confined. The article includes the testimony of a 17-year-old woman who answered a job ad promising high salary and good working conditions but ended up in Kaibo ‘Building 17’, and after a month paid US$6,000 to be released. The Beijing Youth Daily article was subsequently removed from the Internet around August 2022, but at the time of writing in October 2022 it still remains available on some websites.

In June 2022, a Chinese national leading a rescue team attempted to rescue 11 Chinese men from seven compounds in Sihanoukville, including Kaibo. All these attempts failed, and people at two locations later reported they faced repercussions from the companies that held them. According to reporting by VOD, two of the people claimed they were kidnapped in Sihanoukville and three said they had responded to job ads for construction work, restaurant work, and customer-service. A 22-year-old man said he had been sold between multiple buildings in the Kaibo complex, before later ending up at the Victory Paradise casino complex. While at Kaibo, the man contacted the Facebook page of the governor of Preah Sihanouk province and was given the contact of the provincial immigration police. When police arrived at the compound, the individual claims that the property manager told him to withdraw the complaint, or he would be ‘beaten and sold again’. The man was later forced to record a video saying he did not want to leave and retracted his complaint.

Although it was mostly Chinese nationals that worked in the Kaibo complex initially, people of other nationalities have been rescued from the area after appealing for help. Online gambling and scam operators originally focused on targeting Chinese people inside China, but later branched out to Chinese speakers in other countries, and eventually began to target non-Chinese, including people in Thailand, Vietnam, and beyond. This requires workers who can speak additional languages. Scams targeting Thai nationals have been found to operate from inside the Kaibo compound. In February 2022, after high-ranking Thai police officials travelled to Cambodia to deliver arrest warrants, Cambodian police raided the ‘Chinatown GM Office’ and detained 13 individuals accused of defrauding people in Thailand. Chinatown GM Office is marked on Google Maps as being inside the Kaibo Park. A few days later, the Cambodian police and military police rescued 32 Thai nationals from the Chinatown area.

In April 2022, Malaysian lawmakers told the press that more than 300 Malaysian citizens may be trapped in online scam centres in Cambodia. Malaysia’s Council for Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants, which supports the work of the Malaysian Government’s Council for Anti-Trafficking in Persons, has been working with Interpol and Aseanapol to secure the release of these people, and several rescue operations have taken place since. One person who was rescued reported that he originally travelled to Cambodia answering a job ad for customer service and translation, but on arriving in Sihanoukville found the work was in fact an online scam. He contacted the police and sent them the location of the compound, but his chat was reported to the bosses of the scam operation, who told him they had to pay US$5,000 in order to stop the police from intervening. After this, he was sold to another company for US$11,000. He was eventually transferred to the Kaibo complex to work on an online gambling platform and was not allowed to leave the compound.

In yet another story from mid- 2022, VOD reported on the case of a 23-year-old Vietnamese man who went to Cambodia for a ‘computer-based job’ paying a salary double the norm in his home of Ho Chi Minh City. He was in fact smuggled to Cambodia to work for a scam operator in the Kaibo complex. Regular work hours were 12 hours a day, but this often increased to 17–18 hours if targets were not met. Failure to hit these targets resulted in punishment, and this man claimed that after he was locked up and starved for four days, he resolved to leave. When he attempted to leave, his captors demanded a US$6,000 ransom, with the gang threatening to sell him to operators in Thailand if he did not find the money. After contacting his family in secret, they began to raise funds to pay the amount and he eventually got out with support from a local charity group.

More generally, the wider Chinatown area became associated with frequent reports of serious, and often violent, crime. A review of crime reports by VOD in early 2022 found cases of abandoned bodies, homicides, assaults, firearms, extortion, and detention in the Chinatown area. In January 2022, two bodies were found in shallow graves on the land adjacent to the Kaibo complex. In March, a security guard was found hanging in one of the Kaibo buildings. When asked by VOD about this case, local police had limited information. A local officer told the reporter that the area was hard to police: ‘These places don’t allow us to go in.’ When asked how many suicides and deaths had occurred at the compounds he said: ‘I forget it because there are so many, and I don’t know which is which. Some cases we know, while others we don’t know about.’

After many months of denying that illegal confinement was happening in Cambodian scam compounds, a nationwide crackdown on ‘illegal’ gambling commenced in August 2022. This resulted in raids of various gambling locations, including small local gambling rooms and a handful of major compounds that were known to be running illegal online gambling and/or scam operations. Soon after, official statements on the online compounds shifted drastically, and officials began to admit that human trafficking and detention were happening, and that as many as 100,000 people may be involved in ‘illegal gambling’ (officials still appear reluctant to acknowledge that many operations are in fact conducting online fraud). In Sihanoukville, 10 compounds were raided, while others were tipped off that raids were coming, or simply told to stop operating. An exodus of workers from Sihanoukville occurred, with reports that some people moved to compounds in other parts of the country.

Despite the compound being widely known as a centre of illegal activity, Kaibo was allowed to operate undisturbed by police for several years. However, in September 2022, with a crackdown on compounds in the city under way, Kaibo and the neighbouring Jinshui compound largely cleared out within 24 hours. The authors visited the area on 17 September and found it to be unusually quiet. The next day workers could be seen outside with bags waiting for buses to pick them up. Some of these buses went to other compounds in the city, but several were observed leaving Sihanoukville. Cambodia News Today (今日柬闻) estimated 800 people left soon after the tip off.

The following day, Cambodia News Today gained access to the compound and saw what it described as an ‘abandoned town’, with few workers left inside, shops and restaurants locked, and trucks leaving loaded with furniture. The reporter observed Cambodian workers cutting down the barbed wire surrounding the compound, and a source told the paper that the provincial government has issued instructions that all compounds are required to open their gates, remove barbed wire, take bars down from window, and knock down walls in some cases. A raid never actually went ahead at Kaibo, and it remains to be seen if any criminal action will be taken against the owners of the compound and the companies that were operating there.

In late September, in a report following up on the raids in Sihanoukville, VOD reporters visited several compounds, including Kaibo. They found Kaibo ‘mostly emptied’, but spoke to a security guard there who said that in the past he had worked to prevent escapes. According to the man: ‘Some people jumped from the building and ran to escape. … They jumped but we recaptured them and handed them to their bosses, and we don’t know what happened to them after that. The boss handled them.’ In late October, VOD reported that some workers from compounds in Cambodia were being moved across borders to neighbouring countries in order to escape the crackdown ongoing in Cambodia. They spoke to one person from Taiwan who was working for a fraud operator at Kaibo, but after the zone cleared out he was moved with other workers overland to the notorious Golden Triangle area of northern Laos. After paying a ransom, and with assistance from a Taiwanese politician, he was able to leave the compound in Laos.

Pictures from inside Kaibo the day after the exodus, 19 September. Source: 今日柬闻.

In December 2022, the company RSX Investment Co., Ltd. was granted a temporary casino license for  KB Casino. RSX is returned to below.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to Kaibo?

Reporting on the situation at Chinatown in April 2022, a now deleted article in the Beijing Youth Daily quoted an ‘insider’ who said the Kaibo and Jinshui projects are both developed by a single person: Dong Lecheng (董勒成), the founder of Yunnan Jingcheng Group (云南景成集团有限公司). In the 2000s, Dong Lecheng was found guilty of involvement in illegal gambling and has been implicated in numerous criminal cases since then. There are several links between Dong Lecheng and the Kaibo operators, but it is challenging to confirm who the true owner of the development area is, and Dong has denied any link to criminal activity in the area. Dong’s ties to the Jinshui compound are much better documented, and his background is discussed at length in that profile (see here).  

Connected Companies

Although it is unclear exactly which company owns the land that the Kaibo development is situated on, business registration documents, company publicity, and media investigations reveal that several actors are connected to the Kaibo compound. This includes Cambodian Senator Kok An, his late son-in-law Rithy Samnang, and two Chinese-born men: Xu Aimin (徐爱民), who is reported to be a wanted fugitive in China, and Chen Al Len (born Chen Fuzhou, characters unknown). Another Chinese-born businessman, Su Zhongjian (characters unknown), was linked to Kaibo-connected companies, but resigned from his director positions in 2021.

Rithy Samnang, an okhna who died of a chronic illness in Singapore in May 2022, appears in Cambodia’s business registry linked to over 30 companies in a range of sectors, but his personal website highlights five of which he was the founder—payment app Pi Pay, Phnom Penh City Football Club, KB Hotel, and investment firms RSX Investment and KBX Investment.

Three of these five companies—KB Hotel, RSX Investment, and KBX Investment—have documented ties to the Kaibo compound (and the KB in their name stands for Kaibo). All are recorded in Cambodia’s Ministry of Commerce company database. According to these documents, as of October 2022:

• Rithy Samnang was the chair of the board of KB Hotel, and Xu Aimin and Chen Al Len are directors. Su Zhongjian resigned as director in March 2021.

• Rithy Samnang was the chair of the board of RSX Investment, and Xu Aimin and Chen Al Len are directors. Su Zhongjian resigned as director in March 2021.

• Xu Aimin is chair of the board of KBX Investment.

Although Senator Kok An does not appear on the records of any of these companies, he is often pictured at events connected to these projects. For example, in the KB Central ground-breaking ceremony discussed below, he sat in the front seat with Rithy Samnang in the background, despite the fact that Samnang was chair of the company at the time. Rithy Samnang’s brother, Rithy Raksmei, also appeared at the launch event. Rithy Raksmei is the owner of K99 Group, which is profiled here.

The first of the three companies, KB Hotel (凱博酒店), is situated within the Kaibo complex and comprises both a hotel and casino. When the authors visited the site in June 2022, the hotel appeared to be closed, and it was not possible to make bookings online.

The second company, KBX Investment (凯博投资有限公司), is a property developer, and several online job recruitment ads indicate that it is the developer of the Kaibo complex. In January 2022, KBX received approval from the Council for Development of Cambodia to move forward with a US$128-million five-star hotel in Phnom Penh (returned to below in the section on contracting).

The third company, RSX Investment (凯博集团柬埔寨西港房地产公司), is linked to a planned but stalled development adjacent to the Kaibo compound. This large plot was set to be developed into another major complex called KB Central (凱博广场). Ground was broken on the project in October 2019, with Senator Kok An and Rithy Samnang leading the ceremony and Xu Aimin also in attendance (see the slideshow below). The US$500-million project is planned to include a 38-story five-star hotel, green spaces, entertainment facilities, and casino. However, when authors visited the area in June 2022 the plot remained vacant with sign boards for KB Central fading in the sun. At the time of writing in September 2022, this project has not moved forward. The map below shows the location of this plot and the neighbouring developments. According to information provided by people rescued from Kaibo, two buildings in the second phase of Jinshui house scam operators and are reportedly known as ‘Kaibo 2’.

Donations to Charitable Causes

The companies and individuals connected to the Kaibo project have donated significant amounts to charity in recent years (see the slideshow below).

Xu Aimin (徐爱民)

Xu Aimin first came into the spotlight in an investigative report by Radio Free Asia (RFA) in 2021. RFA found that Xu Aimin was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in jail in China in 2013 for his role in masterminding an international gambling operation worth US$1.75 billion. In 2010, Chinese police investigated an online baccarat platform and traced servers to Cambodia. While 27 people were apprehended in China, Xu remained in Cambodia, where he had obtained citizenship in 2005. Despite China issuing an Interpol Red Notice for his arrest and a Hong Kong magistrate issuing an arrest warrant regarding allegations of laundering gambling proceeds through five HSBC accounts, he has not been apprehended in Cambodia, where he has made little attempt to keep a low profile. RFA reported that China’s powerful Ministry of Public Security sent senior officials to Cambodia multiple times in 2012 and 2013 to seek the arrest and deportation of people involved in the gambling operation Xu Aimin was implicated in. This included meeting with Cambodian Interior Minister Sar Kheng, but Xu remains a free man. Xu Aimin has appeared at public events alongside Chinatown developer Dong Lecheng, including the launch of Dong’s JC Airlines and the delivery of new JC Airlines planes.

Chen Al Len (Chen Fuzhou)

Chen Al Len, another Chinese-born individual involved in the Kaibo companies, became a Cambodian citizen in 2018. His Chinese name is Chen Fuzhou, although we were unable to ascertain the characters. According to Cambodia’s business registry, as of October 2022, he was a director at KB Hotel and RSX Investment, as well as several other companies from the Henghe Group (恒合集团), which is linked to a notorious online compound in Pursat (profiled here) and a casino in Svay Rieng.

Su Zhongjian

Su Zhongjian was listed in Cambodia’s business registry as a director at KB Hotel and RSX Investment until he stepped down in March 2021. He is also connected to over 20 other companies in Cambodia, including companies under the Henghe Group. Su became a Cambodian citizen in 2015. He has also invested in two other companies with Rithy Samnang—RS9 Investment Co., Ltd. and Koh Smach Island Resort Developments Co., Ltd.

Companies Contracted for Kaibo-linked Projects

Although there is no suggestion that the company is an investor in Kaibo projects, a provincial Chinese state-owned enterprise has been contracted to build projects for KBX Investment, as well as other companies operating in the Chinatown area. Yunnan Construction and Investment Holding Group (YCIH, 云南省建设投资控股集团有限公司) has a large footprint in the area. It built the Golden Sun Sky Haigang hotel and casino building, which is the large glass building that sits at the centre of the Chinatown area. It is also currently in the process of constructing a new block of buildings directly facing the Jinshui compound (both of which are covered in the Jinshui profile here).

Despite the extensive media coverage of Kaibo’s involvement in online fraud and abuses of Chinese nationals, as well as Xu Aimin’s status as a wanted criminal in China, a subsidiary of YCIH has been contracted to build the new Kaibo Hotel in Phnom Penh (as discussed above, another project of Xu Aimin’s KBX Investment). The YCIH subsidiary China National Nonferrous Metal Industry Fourteenth Metallurgical Construction Co., Ltd. (中国有色金属工业第十四冶金建设公司) started work on the building in early 2022.

Location of Kaibo

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

Rithy Samnang had business links with Myanmar national Aik Paung, who is involved in the Nanhai Casino (see profile here), another building in central Sihanoukville reported to house scam operations.

Kok An and Rithy Samnang are connected to the Crown Group, which is linked to operations in Sihanoukville, Poipet, and Bavet. This includes Crown Hi-Tech Industrial Park (see profile here), where reports have found people held and forced to work in scam operations.

The brother of Rithy Samnang, Rithy Raksmei, is linked to the K99 Group, which owns the K99 Triumph City compound in Sihanoukville (see profile here). He also purchased buildings in Chinatown from Dong Lecheng (see Jinshui profile here).

Chen Al Len and Su Zhongjian are connected to Henghe Group, which reportedly operates a major scam compound in Pursat at the MDS Henghe Thmorda Special Economic Zone (see profile here).

Kaibo sits alongside Jinshui, another notorious scam compound (see profile here). There are rumours that the ultimate developer of the land that Chinatown (including Kaibo and Jinshui) sits on is the same person—Chinese businessman Dong Lecheng—but this remains unproven.

Updates

3 April 2023: Added information on RSX Investment Co., Ltd. receiving temporary casino license for KB Casino in December 2022.

Kaibo in the News

2022

3 November: Huang, Yan. ‘The Big Transfer: Sihanoukville Scammers Scatter.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Following raids of online compounds in Sihanoukville, large-scale transfer of workers occurred, at first within the city, later to other parts of the country. Includes interview with a worker from Kaibo who was told to pack his things and placed on a bus to another compound, before being moved to a hotel with around 100 others the next day.

24 October: Mech, Dara. ‘Scam Workers Relocated From Cambodia to Laos, Myanmar.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Report on workers from Cambodian compounds being moved to neighbouring countries and eventually ending up in fraud operations in Myanmar and northern Laos. Includes story of one Taiwanese man who was taken from Kaibo to the Golden Triangle zone in Laos.

29 September: Mech, Dara. ‘Amid Ongoing Scam Raids, Sihanoukville Residents Recall Insecurity.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

VOD visits compounds in Sihanoukville to assess the situation after several weeks of raids and rescues in the city. Reporters find Kaibo largely empty.

19 September: Huang, Yan 黄岩. ‘独家重磅！西港中国城凯博金水全部对外开放 [Exclusive! Sihanoukville Chinatown Kaibo and Jinshui Are Fully Open to the Public].’  今日柬闻 [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Chinese reporter gains access to the Kaibo compound after the worker exodus and observes an ‘abandoned town’.

19 September: Mech, Dara. ‘Eerie Silence Descends on Notorious Sihanoukville Scam Compounds.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Round-up of a series of raids that occurred in Sihanoukville the preceding five days, and the clear out of Kaibo compound.

18 September: Huang, Yan. ‘西港最大园区被查？数百人连夜大转移 [Was the Largest Park in Westport Investigated? Hundreds of People Moved Overnight].’ 今日柬闻 [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Initial report on the raid tip off and evacuation of the Kaibo compound.

26 August: Nguyen, Sen. ‘Behind a Slave Rescue from a Cambodian Scam Operation.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Report on the successful attempt of a Vietnamese national to escape from Kaibo, after paying a ransom and seeking support from a local charity group and VOD.

23 August: Yunnan Jingcheng Co., Ltd. ‘Yunnan Jingcheng Group Co., Ltd strongly deny charges of “human trafficking, fraud, cyber fraud”.’ Khmer Times. Link.

Yunnan Jingcheng and businessman Dong Lecheng issue strongly worded statement denying claims made by Al Jazeera, Net Ease, and other media outlets that it is involved in ‘human trafficking, fraud, cyber fraud’.

18 August: ‘柬埔寨詐騙｜曾在中國捲入賭博詐騙案　轉投西港成黑金勢力三巨頭 [Cambodian Fraud: Once Involved in Gambling Fraud in China, He Took Refuge in Sihanoukville and Became One of the Top Three Black Gold Tycoons].’ Hong Kong 101. Link.

Profile of three Chinese tycoons with criminal records who took Cambodian citizenship and, because of their close relationships with Cambodian officials and businessmen, have prospered through online crime. Focuses on Xu Aimin, Dong Lecheng, and She Zhijiang.

11 August: 101 East. ‘Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves.’ Al Jazeera. Link.

Longform article focusing on the victims highlighted in below documentary. Includes two people sold to Kaibo.

9 August: ‘「是台灣人賣了台灣人」──逃離柬埔寨詐騙園區，人口販運倖存者的自白 [“It Was Taiwanese Who Sold Taiwanese” – Confessions of a Human Trafficking Survivor Who Escaped From Cambodia’s Scam Zone].’ The Reporter. Link.

Taiwan outlet report on interviews with victims trafficked from Taiwan to scam compounds in Cambodia who later escaped. Includes testimony from one person trafficked to Kaibo Building 13.

14 July: 101 East. ‘Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves.’ Al Jazeera. Link.

Documentary on some of the main scam compounds located in Sihanoukville and Pursat. Includes testimony from one person who was held at ‘Kaibo 5’ building.

20 June: Mech, Dara and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘“How to Help Them?” Volunteer Stonewalled in Scam Worker Rescues.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

A Chinese national working to rescue people held in scam compounds attempts to rescue 11 men from seven compounds in Sihanoukville, including Kaibo. All attempts prove unsuccessful.

20 April: Keeton-Olsen, Danielle. ‘After Malaysian Rescues from Cambodia, Politician Warns More People Trapped.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Malaysian lawmaker estimates over 300 Malaysian citizens trapped in online scam operations in Cambodia. One rescued national said he was sold to a company operating in the Kaibo complex.

1 April: Li, Yiming 李一鸣. ‘难以逃离的柬埔寨西港“中国城” ：被绑架被倒卖，被威胁“沉尸海底” … [The “China Town” in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, that is Difficult to Escape: Kidnapped, Resold, Threatened to “Sink the Corpse to the Bottom of the Sea” …].’ 北京青年报 [Beijing Youth Daily]. Link.

Newspaper of Beijing’s Communist Youth League reports on the situation in Chinatown, Sihanoukville, documenting the testimony of people held in the Kaibo and Jinshui compounds. [Note: The article was removed from the internet around August 2022, but at the time of writing it remains available on some websites].

18 March: Mech, Dara. ‘Body Found Hanging in Sihanoukville’s Alleged Slave-Compound Area.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Security guard found hanged at ‘Building 23’ of the KB compound, national police tell media the case was a suicide.

11 March: Mech, Dara and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘Crimes in Shadows: Sihanoukville’s Grisly Reports, Pressure on Journalists.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Review of crime reports from past two years include six cases of bodies found in public locations or washed up on the beach, 19 homicides, assaults, and firearms cases, 11 cases of extortion and detention, along with other serious crimes. Includes serious crimes in Chinatown area.

February 18: Mech, Dara, Cindy Liu, and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘Victims Allege Sihanoukville Precincts with Ties to Major Businesses Are Sites of Scams, Torture, Detention.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Reports on cases forced labour and human trafficking connected to scam compounds in Sihanoukville, including Kaibo.

18 February: Nop Meechukhun. ‘Group of 32 Thai Nationals Rescued by Cambodian Authorities after Reportedly Unlawfully Being Detained in Rooms While Being Smuggled for Work in Cambodia.’ The Pattaya News. Link.

32 Thai nationals rescued from Chinatown by Cambodian military and police, after reportedly being smuggled into the country and held in a compound.

17 February: Gu, Yuebing 顾月冰. ‘逃离柬埔寨“网赌之城” [Escape from Cambodia’s “City of Online Casinos”].’ 南方周末 [Southern Weekly]. Link.

Chinese media reports on the scale of online scams operating from Sihanoukville and the conditions in which people are forced to work. Names several compounds as sites for online scam companies, including ‘Kaibo Chinatown’.

15 February: Jintamas Saksornchai. ‘Thai Police Kept at Arm’s Length in Raids on Multimillion-Dollar Scam Operators.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

After high-ranking Thai officials travel to Cambodia to deliver 71 arrest warrants, Cambodian police raid three buildings, arresting 21. Includes news of the raid of Chinatown GM Office in Kaibo Park.

13 February: ‘21 Suspects Captured in Crackdown on Scam Operations in Cambodia.’ The Nation. Link.

Thai coverage of raid on Chinatown GM Office (inside Kaibo Park) in which 13 people were arrested. Building serves as accommodation and workplace for scammers who tricked people into playing games for money. Scammers pretended to be linked to Thai companies Central department store and PTT Group. Most victims were Thais, who lost at least 500 million baht in total.

13 February: Wassayos Ngamkham. ‘21 Thais Cuffed in Cambodia on Fraud Charges.’ Bangkok Post. Link.

Thai coverage of raid on Chinatown GM Office (inside Kaibo Park) in which 13 people were arrested. Confirms arrested were Thai nationals working for a gang operated by Chinese nationals.

2021

26 July: ‘Facebook Jobs Scam: Some Released, Others Still Held in Sihanoukville.’ Cambodia News English. Link.

Following media reports on Filipino woman held against her will in Chinatown area, several people released. One of the released told media that others remain inside, including several African women.

26 July: ‘Foreign Women Illegally Detained After Answering Facebook Job Ads.’ Cambodia News English. Link.

English reporting of Philippines national held against her will in Chinatown complex after responding to a Facebook job recruitment ad.

26 July: Soy, Sopheap. ‘ករណីជួញដូរមនុស្ស នៅខេត្តព្រះសីហនុ ទៅរកការងារ បែរជាត្រូវបង្ខាំងមនុស្សទុក បង្អត់បាយ ដកលិខិតឆ្លងដែន និងទូរស័ព្ទ’ [Human Trafficking Case in Sihanoukville to Work, People Were Detained, Deprived of Food, Confiscated Passports and Telephones]. DAP News. Link.

Khmer-language media reports husband of Philippines national reported his wife being held against her will in Chinatown complex after responding to a Facebook job recruitment ad.

23 June: Davies, Jack, Lee Chi Chi, Chan Yun Nam and Sovannarith Keo. ‘Wanted Chinese Kingpin Owns Casino With Cambodian Senator’s Son-in-Law.’ Radio Free Asia. Link.

Investigation unveils criminal past of Xu Aimin, who is wanted for crimes in China yet is a prominent investor in the group of companies behind Kaibo.

Chinese Name: 奥斯卡
Location: Ochheuteal Beach, Sangkat Buon, Sihanoukville, Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia.

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What Do We Know about Oscar Casino?

The Oscar venue is located in the Ochheuteal Beach area of Sihanoukville and contains a nightclub, bars, and KTV. It is located opposite the White Sand Palace Hotel and sits adjacent to another White Sand building. White Sand Group is implicated in multiple reports of online scams operating from their White Sand Palace Hotel and a compound in the north of the city known as White Sand 2 (see profile here). Media reports have referred to the venue as Oscar KTV and Oscar Casino, but in company materials it has gone by the name 奥斯卡国际娱乐会所 (Oscar International Entertainment Club) and 奥斯卡国际娱乐商务会所 (Oscar International Entertainment Business Club).

In July 2022, several media outlets reported that 10 Chinese nationals were rescued from ‘Oscar Casino’. The story broke when Nokorwat News Daily published details of a complaint that it had received, alleging that 13 Chinese nationals were being held in the building. A Chinese man living in Sihanoukville sent the complaint on behalf of those being held at Oscar to the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Governor and then shared it with Nokorwat. According to the document, the 13 individuals themselves had already contacted authorities the previous month to complain, but when the company holding them had heard about this they had threatened them and told them to inform the police that they were not being detained. After this failed attempt, they contacted the friend who requested the intervention from the governor. This second complaint provided the building number, room number, names, and passport copies of the people being held. Nokorwat published short, self-filmed videos of 11 of the people, in which they state the date and their location in ‘Oscar Park’ (奥斯卡园区). Most of them speak in hushed voices, some on balconies and some in bathrooms.

The Preah Sihanouk provincial government and police quickly responded and held a press conference in which they denied that any illegal detention had occurred. According to provincial police chief Chuon Narin, the police received the first report on 25 June, from someone ‘falsely claiming’ they were illegally detained. When police arrived to investigate, they did not find the person. When the second complaint was received by the provincial governor on 25 July, the police returned to Oscar. This time they found the people, and 10 said they wanted to leave while three said they wished to stay as they had a steady income working there. The police chief said the case was complicated, but there was no illegal detention.

Voice of Democracy (VOD) reported that police chief Chuon Narin said of the first complaint: ‘When we went down there, this case was not true, the defamatory complaint about confinement. And we could not find the person who filed the complaint to the hotline.’ Of the second complaint he said: ‘We went down there and there were some people who were working, so this is not confinement or another issue’.

There was, however, no explanation of the reasons why people requested to be rescued and then left with the police, if indeed they were not being held against their will. A member of a volunteer rescue team told Cambodia News Today that they had in the past rescued people from the same location. Instead, during the press conference, the authorities turned their attention to the person that filed the complaint, calling on him to come to the police station to discuss the issue along with the 10 people that were taken out of the Oscar building. VOD quoted the police chief as saying: ‘I need to meet with the complainant and want to know his intentions … So far, I am still waiting.’

Two days after the press conference, a Cambodia-based WeChat blogger published an article stating that he had been informed by a family member of one of the ten released people that they had been sent back to Oscar. However, this article was deleted within 24 hours and there has been no further coverage of the case.

This was not the first time Oscar had been in the news. In 2021, videos circulated of a violent brawl at its club. The video showed a group clashing with security guards, who responded wielding electric batons. The group of men and security fought from the first floor to the second floor, until armed military police arrived to intervene. Soon after, the venue owner JR Oscar Entertainment Co., Ltd. publicly apologised for the event, saying their security guards mishandled the situation.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to Oscar Casino?

Oscar is owned by the company JR Oscar Entertainment Co., Ltd. As of October 2022, Cambodia’s business registry lists the chairman of the company as Zhang Changgong, who is also a director, alongside Yang Maohai. Both are from China, and Zhang’s address is given as Zhejiang Province. As of 2019, company articles listed Xue Dong (薛董) as the executive director, but he has never appeared in any company registration records. In Oscar WeChat posts, he also goes by the name Cheng Yin (成寅) and Xue Chengyin (薛成寅), and several media reports call him Xue Yin (薛寅). In 2019, according to an article from Oscar’s WeChat account, the Sihanoukville Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce was invited by the commander-in-chief of the Cambodian armed forces to participate in a banquet at its headquarters. Xue Dong was present at this event and is pictured with Hing Bun Hieng, commander of Hun Sen’s Bodyguard Unit, among others. Oscar has not updated its WeChat since late 2019, and it is unclear if Xue still holds his position.

Until February 2022, Myanmar national Ahr San was listed as a director. Ahr San is chair of White Sand Group, which reportedly operates online scam operations from at least two of its properties (see profile here). A White Sand promotional video lists a range of properties under the group, including ‘Oscar KTV’.

The month prior to the rescue detailed above, White Sand Group issued a statement saying that it had transferred all of its shares in Oscar KTV to its ‘original partner’, that all outstanding payables and receivables were the responsibility of that partner, and that Oscar’s relationships with other parties had nothing to do with White Sand. Although Cambodia’s business register shows that Ahr San resigned her director position at JR Oscar Entertainment Co., Ltd. in February 2022, online recruitment message board posts suggest that the location was being used for online operations prior to Ahr San stepping down.

The opening ceremony of Oscar was joined by Rithy Raksmei, the owner of K99 Group, which owns the Triumph City compound (see profile here) and the commander of Preah Sihanouk military police, Heng Bunty.

Location of Oscar Casino

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

Oscar sits opposite White Sand Palace and adjacent to another White Sand building. White Sand Group was one of the original investors in Oscar, but in 2022 issued a statement saying it had divested. Ahr San, the chair of White Sand Group stood down as director at JR Oscar Entertainment in February 2022 (White Sand is profiled here).

Oscar Casino in the News

2022

26 July: Huang, Yan 黄岩. ‘西港当局否认13名中国人被拘禁 [Sihanoukville Authorities Deny 13 Chinese Detained].’ 今日柬闻 [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Preah Sihanouk administration and police chief hold press conference and deny that 13 Chinese citizens were illegally detained at Oscar, claiming they were working for the company. Ten people left with the police, who turned attention to finding the person who filed the complaint.

26 July: ‘13名中国人被非法拘禁？西港警长：没有事实根据 [Were 13 Chinese Illegally Detained? Sihanoukville Police Chief: No Factual Basis].’ 柬单网 [Jiandan Net]. Link.

Preah Sihanouk administration and police chief deny that the 13 Chinese citizens were illegally detained at Oscar.

26 July: Mech, Dara. ‘Police Help 10 Leave “Work” in Sihanoukville, but “Not Confinement”.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Preah Sihanouk administration and police chief deny that the 13 Chinese citizens were illegally detained at Oscar. Police state that an earlier complaint was investigated and found to be false, but 10 people left with police this time. Police state they are seeking complainant to help with investigation and assess his motives.

25 July: ‘មានករណីចាប់ឃុំឃាំង និងបង្ខាំងជនជាតិចិន ១៣នាក់ដោយខុសច្បាប់ ប្រព្រឹត្តនៅ ក្នុងកាស៊ីណូ យីហោ អ៊ូវ ហ្សឺ ខា អ៊ុ យៀក ក្រុង-ខេត្តព្រះសីហនុ ,ទោះអភិបាលខេត្តជួយអន្តរាគមន៍ ,ប៉ុន្តែសមត្ថកិច្ចមិនមានចំណាត់ការ ! [Cases of Illegal Detention and Detention of 13 Chinese Nationals in Oscar Casino, Sihanoukville: Although the Provincial Governor Intervened, the Authorities Did Not Take Action!].’ Nokorwat News Daily. Link.

Newspaper publishes complaint written on behalf of 13 people held at ‘Oscar Casino’, along with photos, passport scans and videos appealing for rescue.

25 July: Huang, Yan 黄岩. ‘13名中国人被西港赌场非法拘禁 西港省长回应 [13 Chinese Illegally Detained by Sihanoukville Casino, Sihanoukville Governor Responded].’ 今日柬闻  [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Thirteen Chinese nationals appeal for rescue from illegal detention at Oscar Casino.

2021

2 February: ‘西哈努克港 娱乐场的现状 [Current Situation of Casinos in Sihanoukville].’ 澳门扒仔 [Macau Bazi]. Link.

Report on brawl at Oscar club, and subsequent apology from the owners.

31 January: ‘疯传昨晚西港发生群殴事件 惊动宪兵 [Crazy Rumours of a Gang Fight in Sihanoukville Last Night, Military Police Deployed].’ 环球博讯 [World Gaming Information]. Link.

Brawl breaks out at Oscar club between group of men and security guards.

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What Do We Know about Zhengheng New Energy Building?

On 18 September 2022, Cambodia-China Times broke a brief story that earlier that day Preah Sihanouk provincial police had raided a building in central Sihanoukville called the Zhengheng New Energy Building (正恒新能源). An anonymous police officer said that the raid was due to suspicions that people were being illegally detained there. This came amid a nationwide crackdown on illegal gambling and connected human trafficking and illegal detention that commenced in September and focused largely on Sihanoukville. The building also bears the names 石头连锁国际大酒店 (Stone Chain International Hotel) and 石头商行 (Stone Trading), but the edifice is branded as a Zhengheng New Energy property.

Initial reports stated that the police rescued nine detainees and arrested seven Chinese men. A later report from Fresh News on a raid of a hotel in Sihanoukville the same day did not disclose the name of the location, but the facts of the case match those of reports on Zhengheng New Energy. Fresh News reported that Interior Minister Sar Kheng provided an update on the case, and in addition to the release of the nine detainees and arrest of the Chinese nationals, 37 undocumented Chinese people were found at the location, believed to have been smuggled to Cambodia. The seven men who were arrested had been tasked with preventing people from escaping from the building.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to Zhengheng New Energy Building?

Media reports identified the raid location as the ‘Zhengheng New Energy Building’, and photos from those reports show the logo of Zhengheng Group. The company Zhengheng New Energy Co., Ltd. (正恒新能源有限公司) was registered in 2021 and its chairman is Chinese national Zhu Ronghui. The contact information listed for the company on Cambodia’s business registry is an email for the Zhengheng Group. No information could be found on the activities of this company.

The building also bears the names 石头连锁国际大酒店 (Stone Chain International Hotel) and 石头商行 (Stone Trading). Stone Chain International Hotel Co., Ltd. was registered in Cambodia in April 2022, but no further information on the company could be found. The authors were unable to find any information on Stone Trading.

Zhengheng Group

Zhengheng Group is a Cambodian-registered conglomerate active in a diverse range of sectors, including banking, real estate, investment, internet, human resources, tourism, and entertainment, among others. Zhengheng’s website was taken offline sometime in September to October 2022, and this profile therefore links to cached pages from the site before it went offline. Zhengheng’s website stated that its business covers Cambodia, China, the United States, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, and ‘other developing cities and regions’ in Southeast Asia, but only provided information on its Cambodian portfolio.

The founder and chairman of Zhengheng is Deng Pibing (邓丕兵), a native of Hanshou County in Hunan Province, China. According to one online biography, Deng Pibing came to Cambodia in 2003, when he worked in ‘Internet information engineering’. In 2010, he established the Cambodian human resources information platform CAMHR. He founded Cambodia Zhengheng Group in 2017. According to Cambodia’s business registry, as of October 2022 he held director positions at 20 companies. Among them are Zhengheng Group Co., Ltd. (正恒集团有限公司), Zheng Heng (Cambodia) Co., Ltd. (正恒（柬埔寨）有限公司), and Zhengheng Development Group Co., Ltd. (正恒发展集团公司有限公司), all of which have Deng as a director and Chairman. Three other Zhengheng companies appear in the company register at which Deng does not hold a director position: Zhengheng Property Management Co., Ltd., Zhengheng New Energy Co., Ltd., and Zhengheng Hotel Management Co., Ltd. 

Deng Pibing has received the title of ‘Okhna’, which is secured by making donations of at least US$100,000 to the Cambodian government. In 2016 he received Cambodian citizenship.

Deng holds (or has held) positions in various bodies. He is president of the Cambodia-China Culture and Tourism Industry Promotion Association, honorary chairman of the Hunan General Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, and chairman (link no longer available) of the ASEAN Overseas Chinese Business Association and Hong Kong ASEAN Association. Zhengheng is also a founding member of the Cambodia Internet Startup Association (CISA), along with Huawei and the Cambodian Association of Finance and Technology. CISA describes itself as ‘the first Chinese community on venture capital in Internet industry … initiated jointly by leading Chinese companies in the internet industry in Cambodia.’ Deng Pibing is chairman of CISA.

Deng Pibing has networked extensively during his time in Cambodia and has met publicly with a range of leaders and officials including Prime Minister Hun Sen, Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Land Chea Sophara, Minister for Culture and Fine Arts Phoeurng Sackona, and Koh Kong Governor Mithona Phouthorng. Deng also met with the Lao Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone when he visited Cambodia in 2019 (see slideshow below). In 2021, Du Jiahao, member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and secretary of the CCP Hunan Provincial Committee, led a CCP delegation to Cambodia. During this trip, Director General Xu Xiangping of Hunan Province Department of Commerce and members of the Hunan business community visited Zhengheng Group’s headquarters.

In April 2020, the company donated US$180,000 to the Cambodian government to support its Covid-19 response. Later the same year, Zhengheng donated US$100,000 to the Prime Minister to help victims of that year’s extreme floods. In 2021, with the pandemic hitting Cambodia hard, the company donated US$50,000 to the Red Cross. In the two months prior it had already donated US$250,000 in cash and medical equipment to the Red Cross, police force, and other units on the frontline of the epidemic response.

In August 2022, VOD reported on the involvement of Zhengheng Group in an online scam operation in Koh Kong at its Long Bay project (for more on this, see the profile here). After this was published, an officer claiming to be from a public relations firm representing the company contacted VOD requesting they edit the story and remove mention of Zhengheng companies and its directors. The company offered to pay to have the article changed. When VOD declined, the officer threatened: ‘We will use legal weapons to attack the media that deliberately and maliciously smear and attack Zhengheng Group. Whether it’s in the US or Asia.’ This is the second time that the company has threatened legal action regarding public discussion of its business structure—it also threatened to take action against the Global Anti-Scam Organisation (GASO) when it published an article on Long Bay. For this reason, it should be noted that all information on Zhengheng referenced in this article—as in every other profile in our site—is from public sources and links are provided. Company data can be found on Cambodia’s business registry.

Deng Pibing has links to Cambodian tycoon Tang Kung (គួង តាំង). Tang Kung leads the Tang Kung Group conglomerate, and is chairman of Jing Kan Co., Ltd. Jing Kan developed the Jingang Hotel (see our profile here), which hit the headlines in April 2022, when a group of Vietnamese attempted to escape from the compound, allegedly rushing security armed with knives. A police raid quickly followed this, and over 200 Vietnamese nationals were removed from the premises and deported within a few days. Officials and police denied that this was anything more than normal immigration enforcement, but the facts of the case make clear that the compound was being used as an online fraud and gambling hub, with reports indicating some people were duped into working there and then held against their will. Tang Kung is linked to over 25 companies in Cambodia. One of these companies is Maritime City Co., Ltd., at which Deng Pibing is listed as one of the directors.

Location of Zhengheng New Energy Building

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

The director of Zhengheng Group, Deng Pibing, has business associations with Tang Kung, chairman of Jing Kan Co., Ltd., the developer of the Jingang Hotel project, which has been linked to illegal detention and online crime operations in Sihanoukville (see Jingang Hotel profile here).

Zhengheng is developing the Long Bay resort in Koh Kong. The partially developed project has facilities for tourists and gamblers, but also reportedly houses scam compounds (see profile here).

Zhengheng New Energy Building in the News

2022

19 September: ‘警方根据“热线电话”工作组接到求助个案的调查，发现9名受害者和扣留7名嫌疑犯 [Police Found Nine Victims and Detained Seven Suspects Following Investigation of Case Received By “Hotline” Working Group].’ Fresh News. Link.

Report on the Zhengheng New Energy raid, quotes police and Interior Minister as saying Sihanoukville police rescued nine detainees, arrested seven Chinese, and found 37 undocumented Chinese, likely smuggled into Cambodia.

19 September: ‘西港一大楼涉非法拘禁 警捕7名中国男子 [Police Arrest Seven Chinese Men for Illegal Detention in Sihanoukville Building].’ 柬中时报 [Cambodia-China Times]. Link.

Sihanoukville police rescue nine detainees and arrest seven Chinese men in raid of Zhengheng New Energy Building.

19 September: Mech, Dara. ‘Eerie Silence Descends on Notorious Sihanoukville Scam Compounds.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

Roundup of police activity in Sihanoukville mentions raid on Zhengheng New Energy Building.

18 September: ‘快讯！西港一大楼被查 疑涉非法拘禁 [Breaking! Sihanoukville Building Suspected of Illegal Detention].’ 柬中时报 [Cambodia-China Times]. Link.

Initial report on raid of Zhengheng New Energy Building. Unnamed police officer tells reporters that police suspected people were being illegally detained there.

14 September: Dickison, Michael. ‘PR Rep Offers Money to Remove Company From UDG.’ Voice of Democracy. Link.

After an earlier report on the rescue of a Taiwanese man from Zhengheng’s Long Bay project, a representative of a public relations firm contacts VOD and offers money for them to edit the article removing mention of Zhengheng. VOD decline and the representative threatens legal action.

Chinese Name: 铂莱国际娱乐
Location: Ochheuteal Beach, Sangkat Buon, Sihanoukville, Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia.

What Do We Know about Bolai Casino?

Bolai Casino (铂莱国际娱乐) goes by the name ‘Brilliancy’ in English. Located in the Bolai International Hotel (铂莱国际酒店) in the Ochheuteal Beach area of Sihanoukville, until the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Bolai was a popular casino and nightclub.

In June 2022, Thai media reported that Thailand’s Police Cyber Taskforce had teamed up with Cambodian police to raid two ‘call centres’ in Sihanoukville, resulting in the arrest of 21 suspects. The raids targeted romance scams, also known as ‘pig butchering’, where operators used Tinder and Line to ensnare victims before duping them to invest in phony financial products. Thai police travelled to Cambodia with arrest warrants for Thai nationals, and the 21 suspects were arrested on charges including fraud by impersonating others, being members of a secret and unlawful society, being members of a criminal association, involvement in a transnational criminal organisation, and money laundering. A report by The Nation did not name the locations but included photos of Bolai Casino. The Bangkok Post also reported on the raid, but mis-named the location as ‘Po Lai’, and reported that the suspects were not found during the raid on Bolai.

Recruitment posts can be found on Facebook for Bolai that share common features with those recruiting people to work in online scam and gambling operations. For example, the post below recruiting for ‘Bolai Group’ is seeking customer service operators to work 11 hours a day with one day off per month, board and meals provided, salary of US$1,400 to US$1,600 plus commission. The only requirements are that candidates must be 18–35, able to speak English and Chinese, and have basic computer skills.

A post from a Cambodia-based Chinese language online message board from July 2019 advertises office space at the Bolai International Hotel for rent. It states that four telecommunications companies have direct dedicated lines, 4G coverage, and network stability. It describes the venue as safe and licensed, with 24-hour military police guard, and that the company provides support with office equipment, apartments, canteens, and first-class property management. Photos from the advert depict a familiar call-centre set up.

In April 2022, Bolai received a new casino license.

Bolai Casino has links to K99 Group, a Cambodian gambling junket operator owned by Rithy Raksmei, a well-connected Cambodian businessman. K99 runs gaming junkets at numerous casinos, several of which are linked to companies implicated in online scam operations (see profile on Nanhai here and White Sand here). It also has developments of its own that are linked to online scam operations and rights abuses (see Triumph City profile here). K99 Group also runs junkets through Bolai Casino.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to Oscar Casino?

Bolai Casino is owned by Brilliancy Sihanoukville Investment & Development Co., Ltd. According to Cambodia’s business registry, as of October 2022, the chairman is Chen Youfu, flanked by four more directors: Lin Jie, Luo Tao, Wang Ting, and Zheng Qingfang. All are from China. Wang Ting appears on the casino license.

Online articles indicate that Bolai Casino is linked to New MGM Casino. A page on the website of the contractor that built the Bolai International Hotel states that the developer is New MGM Group (新美高梅集团). An advert posted on local Chinese language website 58cam describes the project as the ‘second phase’ of New MGM. New MGM has been mentioned in several reports on online scam trafficking, including reports from 2022 detailing how several Taiwanese were duped into jobs in Cambodia at New MGM.

Location of Bolai Casino

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

Bolai Casino has a relationship with K99 Group, which runs gambling junkets through the Bolai Casino. K99 Group has relationships with other casinos implicated in online scams and illegal detention and owns the Triumph City compound, which has been implicated in online scams and detention (see profile here).

Bolai International Casino in the News

2022

11 July: ‘Dozens of Thais arrested in Call-Centre Raids in Cambodia.’ Bangkok Post. Link.

Eighty-nine Thais arrested in Cambodia for involvement in scam call-centres. Four raids in June to July included raid on Bolai International Casino (called ‘Po Lai’ in the article), but it was reported suspects could not be found.

24 June: Mech, Dara and Jintamas Saksornchai. ‘Sihanoukville Crime: 5 Arrested for Dealing Guns, 21 Thais Removed from Scams.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Thai police said 21 Thais were removed from two Sihanoukville scam compounds identified as Bolai casino and Jing Cheng hotel.

22 June: ‘21 Nabbed after Allegedly Romancing Victims and Defrauding Them of Millions.’ The Nation. Link.

Romance scammers tricked victims in Thailand into investing via two applications, causing several million baht in losses. Thai police work with Cambodian counterparts to raid two locations, including Bolai Casino, and arrest 21 suspects.

Location: Street 310, Sangkat Boueng Keng Kang, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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What Do We Know about Unnamed Condominium, Street 310, Phnom Penh?

On 7 October 2022, Cambodian immigration police raided a condo building in the heart of Phnom Penh shortly after noon. An immigration official told Cambodia-China Times that the raid was conducted due to suspicions that there was illegal detention happening at the location. A report by 58cam stated that it appeared that Chinese police were involved in the operation.

The Cambodia-China Times reported on a preliminary police report stating that at least 267 foreigners were detained by the police. This included 210 mainland Chinese, 47 Taiwanese, eight Malaysians, two Burmese, and one Thai. This initial report stated that 210 of the people detained did not hold passports. According to an anonymous police source, the raid followed a complaint from a 38-year-old Chinese man sent to the Facebook page of Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sar Kheng. The man claimed that he was being detained by an ‘illegal online gambling company’. Photos from the scene show clear signs that this was an online scam operation. An immigration spokesperson later told Voice of Democracy (VOD) that four complaints were received from people working at the building. He provided updated figures, stating that 274 people were removed from the building, 66 of whom were undocumented. According to the spokesperson, those with papers were in any case involved in illegal work, although he did not specify what type of work.

Less than a week later, a convoy of city buses was sent to the location and took people from the condominium directly to the airport. VOD reporting found that this was the third batch of residents who were removed from the location, and police officers were overheard saying that they would be taken to the airport and onto a flight to China. Armed police escorted the convoy, and as many as 80 people were seen arriving at the Phnom Penh airport departure terminal. This was an unusual move, and in other cases where people have been removed from online compounds and found to be lacking documentation, they have been sent to immigration detention for processing, where many have languished for months. It is unclear why this group was processed and removed from the country so quickly.

On 16 October, a WeChat account published footage it had obtained from inside the building. Although not named in the article, buildings across the street that can be seen in the video match those across the street from the condo on Street 310. The WeChat article stated that the footage was from the previous day, but it is not clear if this showed additional police action after the initial raid, or if it is in fact footage of the raid the week prior. In the video, workers can be seen with their hands in the air gathered in front of the building inside the condo grounds. Although there are no signs of resistance in the short video clip, a uniformed police officer holds a pistol at eye-level and points directly at people as he shouts instructions. Others hold batons in the air as people are led upstairs with their hands up.

Stills from video showing police operation inside the condo building, published 16 October Source: 阿龙 云鹤九天故事汇.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to Unnamed Condominium, Street 310, Phnom Penh?

Media reports did not name the condominium building, and there are no signs displayed outside, so it is unclear who owns the property or which companies were operating there.

Location of Unnamed Condominium, Street 310, Phnom Penh

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

None known.

Unnamed Condominium, Street 310, Phnom Penh, in the News

2022

16 October: ‘昨日金边某诈骗园区被包围？[Was a Fraud Park in Phnom Penh Surrounded Yesterday?]’ 云鹤九天故事汇. Link.

WeChat article shares video from inside police raid of condominium building on Street 310.

14 October: Mech, Dara. ‘Four Workers Called Out for Help from Phnom Penh Condo before Raid.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Immigration department confirms details of raid on Phnom Penh condo, with 274 people detained, 66 without passports. Those with passports were involved in illegal activity and all set to be deported.

13 October: Mech, Dara and Mark Dickison. ‘Police Raid Delivers Dozens of Foreign Nationals Straight to Airport.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Immigration police escort three city buses carrying workers from the raided condominium to the airport for apparent deportation.

13 October: ‘数十名中国人被从涉网赌大楼送往机场 直接遣返回国 [Dozens of Chinese Sent from Online Gambling Compound to the Airport and Repatriated Directly to China].’ 热风网 [Hot Wind Net]. Link.

Dozens of people from raided condominium transported to immigration building at Phnom Penh airport and then to departure terminal.

9 October: ‘金边一网赌窝点被捣毁，数百人被抓多数为中国人 [An Online Gambling Den in Phnom Penh Was Destroyed, Hundreds of People Were Arrested, Most of Them Chinese].’ 柬单网 [58cam]. Link.

Cambodian immigration police raid condo in Boung Keng Kang district, detaining nearly 300 suspects. Report indicates that Chinese police were involved.

8 October: ‘柬埔寨警方突查金边一网赌窝点 包括中国人在内267人被扣 [Cambodian Police Raid an Online Gambling Den in Phnom Penh and Detain 267 People, Including Chinese.]’ 柬中时报 [Cambodia-China Times]. Link.

Preliminary police report states at least 267 foreigners detained by immigration police in raid of condo building on Street 310. This included 210 mainland Chinese, 47 Taiwanese, eight Malaysians, two Burmese and one Thai. 210 of the people detained did not hold passports. 

8 October: ‘突发！移民总局突查金边一公寓 疑似网赌窝点 [Breaking! General Department of Immigration Raids a Suspected Online Gambling Den in an Apartment in Phnom Penh.]’ 柬中时报 [Cambodia-China Times]. Link.

News breaks of raid on condo on Street 310 due to suspicions of illegal detention.

Chinese Name: 金水
Location: Otres Beach, Sangkat Buon, Sihanoukville, Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia.

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What Do We Know about Jinshui?

The Jinshui phase 1 development is a complex of 11 buildings located just off Otres Beach and adjacent to another notorious scam compound, Kaibo (see profile here). Together, this area is commonly referred to as ‘Chinatown’ (中国城). In early 2022, China’s Southern Weekly (南方周末) published a dramatic piece of reporting titled ‘Escape from Cambodia’s “City of Online Casinos”’. The report identified numerous locations in Sihanoukville where online scam companies operate ‘hidden’ within, including ‘Jinshui Chinatown’ (金水中国城). The article has since been deleted, but can be found via Wayback Machine.

Units within the Jinshui buildings were rented to companies running a range of online gambling and scam operations. The Southern Weekly report from April 2022 identified several online gambling companies operating from inside Jinshui, including Tianbo Group (天博集团) and Yabo Sports (亚博体育). A Reddit post published in May 2021 by someone who claims to have worked there says that Boya Group (博雅集团), also known as KOK Sports (KOK体育), operates in ‘Jinshui 5’. Recruitment ads typical of online scam and gambling recruiters can be found on online message boards posted by companies that have operated in the complex. For example, in a comment under one such ad by Five Star Group (五星集团) , a person refers to the company as ‘the most famous Five Star of Jinshui Garden’. Other message board chats refer to Grand Forest Group (大森林集团) working on the fourth floor of Jinshui Building 1, with one person complaining that he was not allowed to leave his work at the online gambling company in summer 2021 as international football tournaments were ongoing.

The Chinatown area has featured in Cambodia-based Chinese language media for some time, but it first came to the attention of English-speaking audiences in July 2021, when the husband of a Philippines national reported that his wife was being held against her will in a complex in the area. On arriving in Sihanoukville after responding to a Facebook job recruitment post, the woman had her passport confiscated and was forbidden to leave. Only after the media covered the story was she finally released. It appears that she was held in the Jinshui compound, but the story brought attention to Chinatown as a whole, and since then there has been ongoing coverage of fraud and online gambling operations, forced labour, and violent crime throughout the area.

Following these reports, in September 2021 the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh released a statement:

Our embassy has noticed that media publications in recent days have exposed the existence of illegal and criminal activities including online gambling, fraud, illegal detention, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, and drug trafficking in the ‘Chinatown’ area of Sihanoukville. The victims involved are citizens of many countries, most of them Chinese. Our embassy attaches great importance to this and is maintaining close communication with the Cambodian side.

The statement went on to say that China and Cambodia maintain high-level law enforcement cooperation, and that the two sides were in communication, making every effort to ‘eliminate numerous obstacles’, and would launch a joint crackdown as soon as possible.

Media reports showed that for some time the Jinshui compound was entirely enclosed (this changed after a crackdown that began in August 2022, see below). During this period, there were just a few entrance and exit points, which until mid-September 2022 were heavily guarded by private security. When the authors visited the site in June 2022, they saw that walls had been built to block all other access points, and it could be seen in some areas those walls had been made higher at a later date, with an additional layer of fresher cement added on top more recently. These walls were a relatively new addition, and were likely built sometime in 2021, as they were not present during previous visits by the authors in late 2019 and early 2020. Restaurants on the ground floor that face the street had bars through the middle, preventing those in the compound from exiting the compound through the restaurant.

In 2021, Khmer Times ran a series of articles on what it called ‘The China Project’. These stories covered the situation in the Chinatown area, and although they lacked specificity on the exact location, appear to have referred mostly to the Jinshui complex. Based on interviews with local sources, Khmer Times estimated at the time that 8,000 to 10,000 people worked there at any one time, and locals reported frequent episodes of violence and suicides. One local vendor interviewed by the paper in September 2021 said: ‘In the last four months there have been lots of suicides … The last one was in August … If an ambulance doesn’t go inside at least twice a week, it is a wonder.’

Numerous media reports and social media postings have recorded testimony from people who have worked in Jinshui who claim that failure to perform can result in brutal beatings, and that requests to leave are denied unless individuals pay a fee of thousands of dollars. While some have willingly gone to work at Jinshui, some, as in the case of the Philippines woman mentioned above, have responded to deceptive job ads, and others claim they have been kidnapped. A documentary released by Al Jazeera in July 2022 also included testimony from a person who claims he was sold four times between companies operating in Jinshui.

Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), the newspaper of Beijing’s Communist Youth League reported on the situation at Chinatown in April 2022, stating that unlike in normal residential compounds, rather than keeping strangers out, the security guards’ job here is to ‘strictly prevent the employees of the online investment company from fleeing without permission’. The article includes testimony of several people who were trapped in online scam compounds. This includes the case of one man who jumped from a window when trying to escape from ‘Jinbei Phase 3 Park’. Injuring his foot badly in the fall, he did not make it far and was recaptured and sold to Jinshui the next day, where he subsequently worked for an online sports betting platform. He told the Beijing Youth Daily that at Jinshui ‘you can hear people screaming in the middle of the night when you are sleeping.’ The Beijing Youth Daily article was subsequently removed from the internet around August 2022, but at the time of writing it still remains available on some websites not based in China.

Even after they do manage to escape, survivors are not safe from retaliation. One post on an online message board put a US$10,000 bounty for the capture of a 20-year-old man who allegedly ‘ran away’ from a company in Jinshui that claimed to have bought him for US$6,000. The post ends with the exhortation: ‘Bounty hunters, move!’ (各大猎人行动吧). (The authors are not linking to this post as it includes pictures of the hunted man’s passport). The authors met three people who escaped Jinshui and subsequently had bounties put on their heads by the companies they left.

Although it appears to have been mostly Chinese nationals that worked in the Jinshui complex, people of other nationalities have been rescued from the area after appealing for help. Online gambling and scam operators originally focused on targeting Chinese people inside China, but later branched out to Chinese speakers in other countries, and eventually began to target non-Chinese gamblers and scam victims, including people in Thailand and Vietnam and beyond. This requires workers who can speak additional languages. Reports by Khmer Times in 2021–22 reported on people of various nationalities being held in or rescued from the area, including Thais, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, South Africans, Russians, Ukrainians, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and Nigerians.

In October 2021, following a request from the Indonesian embassy, Cambodian police rescued 41 Indonesian nationals from Jinshui. A few months later, in February 2022, the Cambodian police and military police rescued 32 Thai nationals from the Chinatown area. In April 2022, Channel News Asia (CNA) reported that 16 Malaysians had been rescued from a compound by Cambodian police in cooperation with the Malaysian police force and with assistance from Interpol and Aseanpol. The 16 were reportedly deceived into work in Cambodia and had their documents seized on arrival and were not allowed to leave the compound. The CNA report does not name the compound, but a report from the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO), which supported the rescue, shared photo and video evidence indicating the people were held at Jinshui.

The wider Chinatown area has become associated with frequent reports of serious, and often violent, crime. A review of crime reports in Sihanoukville by Voice of Democracy (VOD) in early 2022 found cases of abandoned bodies, homicides, assaults, firearms, extortion, and detention, including crimes in the Chinatown area. In January 2022, two bodies were found in shallow graves on land close to the Jinshui complex.

After many months of denying that illegal confinement was happening in Cambodian scam compounds, a nationwide crackdown on ‘illegal’ gambling commenced in September 2022. This resulted in raids of various gambling locations, including small local gambling rooms and a handful of major compounds that were known to be running illegal online gambling and/or scam operations. Soon after, official statements on the online compounds shifted drastically, and officials began to admit that human trafficking and detention were happening, and that as many as 100,000 people may be involved in ‘illegal gambling’ (officials still appear reluctant to acknowledge that many operations are in fact conducting online fraud). In Sihanoukville, 10 compounds were raided, while others were tipped off that raids were coming, or simply told to stop operating. An exodus of workers from Sihanoukville occurred, with reports that some people moved to compounds in other parts of the country.

Despite the notoriety of the Jinshui compound, it managed to operate undisturbed by police for several years. However, in September 2022, with a crackdown on compounds in the city underway, Jinshui and the neighbouring Kaibo compound largely cleared out within 24 hours. The authors visited the area on 17 September and found it to be unusually quiet. The next day workers could be seen outside with bags waiting for buses to pick them up. Some of these buses went to other compounds in the city, but several were observed leaving the city.

The following day, Cambodia News Today gained access to the Kaibo and Jinshui compounds and saw most people had left, with vehicles loaded with furniture ready to depart. A source told the paper that the provincial government has issued instructions that all compounds are required to open their gates, remove barbed wire, take bars down from windows, and knock down walls in some cases. A raid actually never went ahead at Chinatown, and it remains to be seen if any criminal action will be taken against the owners of the compound and the companies that were operating there. The site remained quiet when China Scam Monitor visited the area in December 2022.

Which Actors and Companies Have Been Linked to Jinshui?

Chinatown’s Developer: Dong Lecheng

Reporting on the situation at Chinatown in April 2022, the now-deleted article in the Beijing Youth Daily mentioned above quoted an ‘insider’ who said the ultimate owner of the Chinatown development, including Kaibo and Jinshui, is a single person: Dong Lecheng (董勒成). There is evidence of links between Dong Lecheng and individuals close to Kaibo, but it is challenging to confirm if Dong Lecheng has active links to the Kaibo complex area. For this reason, Kaibo is profiled separately here. Dong has denied any link to criminal activity in the area. 

Dong Lecheng—whose background we describe in more detail in a dedicated section towards the end of the profile—is the founder and chairman of Yunnan Jingcheng Group Co., Ltd. (云南景成集团有限公司). Headquartered in Ruili City, Yunnan Province, Jingcheng Group has worked in cooperation with major companies in China, including state-owned enterprises, and has received local government contracts for civil works. The group has many subsidiaries, in sectors including aviation, construction, hotels, tourism, and jade mining in Myanmar. It began as a border trade company, but later expanded into a large business group. Dong previously held almost 100 per cent of the group’s shares, but in 2018, 70 per cent were transferred to his wife, Chen Qin (陈芹), and 30 per cent to his son Dong Shijie (董世杰). Dong Lecheng remained the group chairman as of 2022.

Dong Lecheng became a Cambodian citizen in 2014, taking the Cambodian name Heng Tong (ហេង តុង). He first registered a company in Cambodia in 2013, and since then has developed strong ties with Cambodia’s business and political elite. In 2014, a delegation from Cambodia visited Jingcheng’s headquarters in Ruili. The group included Suos Yara (ruling party spokesman, central committee member, vice-chair for external relations, and National Assembly member for Preah Vihear) and local tycoons and ruling party senators Kok An and Ly Yong Phat. Ly Yong Phat and Kok An stood alongside Dong Lecheng at the launch of his new company, JC Airlines, in Cambodia in 2017. Kok An was also present at a ceremony marking the arrival of JC Airlines’ new planes in Phnom Penh, as was Chinese fugitive Xu Aimin, who is closely linked to the Kaibo complex (profiled here), and Wang Yong who owns Yongyuan Casino (profiled here) and Bavet Moc Bai Casino (profiled here). Xu also joined the launch ceremony for the airline. When Dong Lecheng opened Rui Li Bank in Phnom Penh, he was joined onstage by Senators Ly Yong Phat and Kok An, as well as Kok An’s son-in-law Rithy Samnang (who prior to his death was closely deeply connected to the Kaibo complex) and his brother Rithy Raksmei (linked to K99 Group, profiled here).

Dong has met Prime Minister Hun Sen numerous times since 2014 (see, for instance, here, here, and here). At a meeting in 2017, the Prime Minister encouraged Jingcheng to invest in Cambodia. Again, Ly Yong Phat was present on that occasion. In 2018, Dong was invited to the Prime Minister’s house to meet him and his wife. In 2019, Chea Sophara (Minister for Land Management) and Hun Mana (Hun Sen’s daughter) led a delegation to meet Dong in Ruili. Also present were Dy Vichea (Hun Mana’s husband, Deputy Chief of Police, and head of the General Department of Internal Security), Chea Sophamden (daughter of Chea Sophara), Yim Leang (husband of Chea Sophamaden, son of Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly, brother-in-law of Hun Sen’s son, Hun Many), Meas Sophearoth (an army general and son of General Meas Sophea), and the vice president of Cambodia’s powerful Canadia Bank. Also present on this trip were the brothers Rithy Raksmei and Rithy Samnang.

In 2018, Dong Lecheng personally sponsored a private Boeing 878 business jet for Prime Minister Hun Sen’s trip to a UN General Assembly meeting. Hun Sen sent a personal thank-you letter to Dong. According to one news report, the rental cost for this plane is around US$70,000 per hour.

The Ministry of Commerce database links Dong to seven companies in Cambodia, including a local subsidiary of Yunnan Jingcheng, JC International Airlines, Cambodian Sihanoukville Entertainment, and Golden Sun Sky Entertainment. His son is a director at Ruili Bank Cambodia as well as at a Jingcheng road and bridge construction company.

The Golden Sun Sky Complex

Dong Lecheng’s signature project in Cambodia is a major hotel and casino development in the Otres beach area of Sihanoukville. This is centred around a massive hotel and entertainment building, flanked by numerous apartment blocks, including Jinshui. While the central casino building has stalled and is not yet open, several surrounding buildings were widely reported to be online scam and gambling complexes.

The broader development is referred to by several names in different reports, including Golden Sun Sky, Haoli Tourism Complex (昊利旅游综合体), the Jingcheng Tourism Complex (景成旅游综合体项目), and Cheerful Bay (悦海湾). In 2018, Yunnan Jingcheng described the complex as the largest tourism real estate project in Sihanoukville, covering 23.7 hectares. The company that is the public face of the development is Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Co., Ltd. which was established by Dong Lecheng in 2017. In Chinese the company is called Haoli Entertainment Co., Ltd. (昊利娱乐有限公司). Although he stood down as chairman in July 2018, he remained closely linked to the company (as discussed below, later the same year he personally signed a deal between Golden Sun Sky and the Macau company Suncity). The central hotel and casino building is known as the Harbour Hotel, or Haigang Hotel in Chinese (海港大酒店). Golden Sun Sky Entertainment received a new casino license from Cambodia’s gaming commission in August 2022.

Jinshui Phases 1, 2, and 3

The part of the complex that has been linked to online scams and bonded labour is called Jinshui, also referred to as Jinshui Garden (金水佳苑) in some Chinese sources. Articles online discuss three phases to the project. Phase one is the row of 11 apartments in the Chinatown area that were completed first and have featured heavily in news reports about online gambling and scam compounds. Phase two sits on the opposite side of the Haigang Hotel building and is currently under construction (see map below for exact locations). In 2018, Jingcheng signed a cooperation agreement with two major Yunnan-based property developers to cooperate on phase 3 of Jinshui, which appears to have not yet started construction. This included Junfa Group (俊发集团), described in some media reports as Yunnan’s largest real estate company, and Huihe Group (汇和集团). A few months later, Dong registered the company Yun Xin Hai Investment Development Co., Ltd. at an address in Sihanoukville. Mo Fei, chairman of Huihe Group was listed as a director, as was another person whose address in China was that of Junfa Group. According to a report by Hong Kong media iFeng, both Mo Fei and Li Jun, the chairman of Junfa Group, can be seen in photos with Dong Lecheng and Alvin Chau, former head of Suncity Group, now imprisoned (returned to below).

Dong sought to bring in a group of wealthy Yunnan investors, including the then richest man in Yunnan, Li Jun, chairman of Junfa Group, and Mo Fei, chairman of Huihe Group. Three months later Dong registered the company Yun Xin Hai, with an address in Sihanoukville. Mo Fei was listed as a director along with another person whose address in China was that of Junfa Group. According to iFeng, both Mo Fei and Li Jun are present in photos with Dong Lecheng and Alvin Chau, former head of Suncity Group, now imprisoned.

The map below shows the complex in full. The location of Jinshui phases 1 and 2 can be seen in blue. The neighbouring Kaibo complex is shown in green (Kaibo is profiled here). As noted above, in 2022 the Beijing Youth Daily reported that Dong Lecheng was rumoured to also be the ultimate owner of the Kaibo complex. While this rumour has been circulating in Cambodia for some time, it is difficult to substantiate. However, according to information provided by people rescued from Kaibo, two buildings in the second phase of Jinshui house scam operators and are reportedly known as ‘Kaibo 2’.

Following reports connecting Dong Lecheng to online crimes, Yunnan Jingcheng published a rebuttal in May 2022. In its statement, the company said a flood of negative news has confused the public, and unverified reports that are ‘inconsistent with the facts have caused adverse public opinion and deeply hurt the reputation and image of the company.’ Following media reports by Al Jazeera and others that named Dong, a stronger statement was issued by the Cambodian subsidiary of Yunnan Jingcheng. In it, the company denied any involvement in human trafficking and cyber fraud and said that it sold the Jinshui Park project in 2018 and the activities of the businesses working there were not affiliated with Yunnan Jingcheng. Describing media reports as slanderous and undermining the legitimate rights and interests of Yunnan Jingcheng Group and Dong Lecheng, the statement ordered those defaming the company to cease or face legal action. Despite these denials, Dong Lecheng has had extensive and well-documented interactions with actors implicated in this industry, and as elaborated below, has in the past faced criminal charges for illegal online gambling activities in China. Additionally, in March 2023, Golden Sun Sky issued a press release announcing the successful completion of construction of the Haigang Hotel. The press release states that the hotel covers 140,000 square metres, but this is just one of the main projects of the larger Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Complex, which covers 1.05 million square metres. The image of the project used in the company press release shows the zone, including the Jinshui buildings and Kaibo 2.

Links to K99 Group

In 2018, Dong Lecheng signed an agreement with Rithy Raksmei to sell ‘Jingcheng Tourism Complex No. 1 and No. 2 Apartment Buildings’. Rithy Raksmei is the brother of the late Rithy Samnang, who himself was the son-in-law of Senator Kok An. Kok An and Rithy Samnang are linked to the Kaibo scam complex (profiled here) adjacent to Dong Lecheng’s Jinshui development. When visiting the area in June 2022, the authors observed that a pair of buildings directly next to the Haigang Hotel carry the logo of the K99 Group, which is owned by Rithy Raksmei. K99 Group is also known to own a notorious compound, Triumph City (profiled here). Rithy Samnang can be seen in the background of photos during an inspection of the Golden Sun Sky complex in 2018 by Cambodia’s Minister for Land Management.

On 12 April 2023, a new casino and hotel were opened in the two buildings purchased by Rithy Raksmei. The two drab buildings bearing the K99 company logo in the slideshow above have now been renovated and painted white and yellow. The buildings now house the Khemarak Hotel, or Kaina Hotel (凯娜酒店) in Chinese, and the Xing Tian Di Casino (星天地娱乐城). Xing Tian Di Co., Ltd. received a licence for the casino in September 2022. The company chair is Rithy Raksmei (according to Cambodia’s business registry as of April 2023).

At the opening ceremony, the group that cut the ribbon included K99 Group’s Rithy Raksmei, Lieutenant-General Sao Sokha (head of Cambodia’s national gendarmerie and deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces) and Preah Sihanouk Governor Kuoch Chamroeun. Deputy Governor Man Sineth and head of Preah Sihanouk Military Police Heng Bunthy were also present. At a reception held that evening to celebrate the launch, Lieutenant-General Sao Sokha, the governor and his deputy were joined by Senator Kok An (mentioned elsewhere in this profile).

Doing Business with Alvin Chau’s Suncity Group

In 2018, a subsidiary of the Macau-based Hong Kong-listed junket operator Suncity Group Holdings Ltd. signed an agreement via subsidiary Suncity Group Management and Consultancy (Sihanoukville) Ltd. to offer consultancy and management services to Golden Sun Sky Entertainment. Although Dong Lecheng resigned as chairman of Golden Sun Sky in July 2018, it was Dong who signed the agreement with Suncity on behalf of the company in September the same year. The project investment was reported to be US$360 million and included casinos, tourism, and property developments. Under the agreement, Suncity would provide advice and management services for Golden Sun Sky’s casino resort project, while cooperating on projects to explore new markets. The signing ceremony was attended by Rithy Raksmei, Senator Ly Yong Phat, and Senator Kok An.

At the time this deal was signed, Suncity Group Holdings was chaired by Alvin Chau (Cheok Wa Chau / Zhou Zhuohua / 周焯華). In 2019, Australian media reported that Chau had been banned from entering Australia due to links to ‘large-scale money-laundering activities’ and current or past links to the 14K triad—formerly led by ‘Broken Tooth’ Wan Kuok-koi, who is also active in Cambodia. In 2019, Chinese state media ran a report accusing Chau of running a multi-billion-dollar online gaming operation from Cambodia and the Philippines that illegally targeted mainland China. Suncity denied that Chau had been investigated in Australia for triad links.

In November 2021, the Wenzhou City Public Security Bureau issued a warrant for Alvin Chau’s arrest. He was arrested in late 2021 and his trial began in Macau in September 2022. Among the charges he faced, he was accused of running a massive illegal online and proxy betting operation that allowed Suncity VIP Room account holders to place bets online or by phone in VIP lounges it set up in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. He was sentenced to 18 years in jail in January 2023 on over 100 charges including organised crime and illegal gaming. Suncity had VIP gaming rooms at the Xigang International Casino, which is located inside the Xi-Hu Resort Hotel in Sihanoukville. Xi-Hu is owned by the same people who operate the Nanhai Hotel, which has been reported to house scam operations (profiled here).

Golden Sun Sky Beach Club

In November 2021, a new part of the Golden Sun Sky development was inaugurated. The Beach Club project is a large villa and adjoined pier that sits on the stretch of beach in front of the Haigang Hotel. The ribbon was cut by Dong Lecheng and several officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Mem Sam An and Preah Sihanouk Governor Kuoch Chamroeun. The governor and his deputy, Long Dimanche, along with senators Ly Yong Phat and Kok An, joined on the stage later in the day. Provincial police, gendarmerie, and court officials were also in attendance.

A Network of Naturalised Cambodian Citizens

As noted above, Dong Lecheng has been a Cambodian citizen for several years. A review of Cambodia’s company database links Dong Lecheng to a number of China-born associates who have also received Cambodian citizenship. All the individuals highlighted in the chart below now hold Cambodian passports.

Dong Lecheng received his Cambodian citizenship in February 2014. Later, on 13 February 2018, three members of Dong Lecheng’s family—the wife Chen Qin (陈芹), son Dong Shijie (董世杰), and Jingcheng vice president Dong Shijia (董世佳)—all received citizenship. On the same day, three of his business associates (Zhao Wei, Xu Shihua, and Zhao Xinyuan) all became naturalised Cambodian citizens. Dual citizenship is forbidden under Chinese law, and therefore all these individuals should by now have surrendered their Chinese citizenship. It is not clear where Dong Lecheng is currently based.

Who Is Dong Lecheng?

Dong Lecheng is from the Jingpo ethnic group and is president of the Cambodian World Jingpo General Chamber of Commerce. The Jingpo are the largest subset of the Kachin people, an ethnic group that mostly resides in Kachin State of northern Myanmar, but who are also present in parts of Yunnan. In a paper published by Dr. Elanah Uretsky in 2016, the author describes Dong as the ‘modern-day Chieftain for the Jingpo community in Ruili’, where his social and economic influence developed into political influence over time. According to Uretsky, Dong’s business began in trading timber with Kachin people in Myanmar and then diversified to gems, before growing into the diversified business group that Jingcheng is today. Over time he became increasingly integrated into local financial and political networks:

Dong Lecheng is married to a Han woman whose father is a high-level official in one of China’s major banks. This gave him access to capital as well as influence with the local government. His private business venture maintains close alliance with the governments of Dehong and Ruili, often drawing on government capital to fund new ventures. These partnerships increase Dong’s local political leverage and also help to develop Dehong economically. (Uretsky 2016, p. 9)

In April 2022, the Beijing Youth Dailyreported in the now-deleted article mentioned above that Dong Lecheng was involved in a company established in an economic zone in Myanmar, across the border from Yunnan, which hosted gambling operations and hotels. Set up with a group of people from Hong Kong, the operation was described as the ‘nation’s largest online gambling case’, providing online and telephone gambling services to people in China (returned to below).  Beijing Youth Daily reported that he has been the subject of two criminal cases in China. In 2007, he was convicted of running an illegal gaming hall in the Jingcheng Hotel. Despite being a shareholder and principal actor in the operation, Dong received a one-year prison sentence suspended for two years due to his repentance and good behaviour. According to iFeng, this resulted in him losing his positions as member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and representative of the National People’s Congress. 

In the midst of a 2014 anti-corruption campaign in Yunnan, Dong was investigated by the Kunming City Procuratorate for allegedly paying bribes to officials in Ruili City, Yunnan, between 1999 and 2010.  However, he soon re-emerged into the public eye, while several officials he was accused of paying bribes received lengthy prison sentences. A review of court documents reveals that Dong Lecheng has been implicated in multiple court cases:

February 2015: Yang Yueguo Corruption Case [pdf]

Yang received bribes from over a dozen businesses in exchange for contracts and other favours. Dong paid a total of 2.4 million RMB and US$600,000 in bribes in 2008. Yang returned approximately two thirds of these funds and was sentenced to life in prison.

August 2015: Criminal Trial of Li and Four Other Defendants for Establishing Illegal Casinos [pdf]

A court in Heilongjiang found a man named Li and three others guilty of involvement in operating illegal casinos in northern Myanmar. The defendants worked for various casinos in the Maijayang Special Economic Zone. According to the judgement, an unnamed man ‘originally from Dianbai County, Guangdong Province, now a national of Cambodia’ acquired rights to develop and operate the zone in 2002. Although he is not named in the judgement, this description fits Wang Yong, who appears in our profiles on Yongyuan Casino and Bavet Moc Bai Casino. The judgement states that the unnamed Cambodian citizen, Dong Lecheng, and Hong Konger Tan Guangtou (谭光头) established the Maida Oriental Company (迈达东方公司) in 2006. Operating until 2009, the company rented out and managed gambling halls. The defendants in this trial were from Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province (Dong Lecheng’s hometown) and Dianbai County, Maoming City, Guangdong Province (Wang Yong’s hometown). Although Dong is mentioned in the judgement, he was not on trial. More details on the Maijayang Special Economic Zone are included in our Yongyuan Casino and Bavet Moc Bai Casino profiles.

February 2016: Meng Biguang Corruption Case [pdf]

During his period as Governor and Municipal Party Secretary of Dehong Autonomous Prefecture from 2009 to 2013, Meng received 6.97 million RMB in bribes from eight people including Dong Lecheng. The case details over 600,000 RMB in bribes and favours paid by Dong to Meng, for which Meng provided Dong with construction contracts in return. Meng was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Hong Kong media iFeng reported that Dong built a close relationship with Meng, and when Yunnan Jingcheng Road and Bridge Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. bid for construction of part of a highway in Dehong Prefecture, Meng Biguang instructed the director of the Transportation Bureau to select Dong’s company.

May 2016: Yin Ninghua Corruption Case [pdf]

Yin held numerous positions in Dehong Prefecture and Ruili City, including the Chair of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Representative of the People’s Congress and Chairman of Ruili Finance Bureau. Yin received upwards of 600,000 RMB from Dong’s Yunnan Jingcheng company. This was in exchange for tens of millions of RMB in tax benefits and subsidies. Yin was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

May 2018: Criminal Case against Liu Xinguang [pdf]

Liu was a member of the Dehong CPPCC before his retirement in 2017. From 2002 to 2014 he held positions in Yingjiang county and Dehong Autonomous Prefecture, during which time he received over 5 million RMB from Dong Lecheng and bought a house from one of Dong’s real estate programmes with a price significantly lower than the market price (Liu benefited by at least 550,000 RMB). In return, Liu helped Jingcheng Company to get a loan of 4.3 billion RMB from State Treasury Funds (国库资金). Liu was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

This case also featured in iFeng reporting, which found that Dong paid bribes to Liu while he was director of the Dehong Prefecture Finance Bureau and director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. According to iFeng’s reporting on the Yunnan Provincial People’s Court judgement, in May 2010, Dong asked his secretary to withdraw 3 million yuan from a company bank account, put it in a large suitcase, and drove from Ruili to Kunming to have dinner with Liu. Dong then asked the secretary to put the suitcase into Liu Xinguang’s car. From 2010 to 2014, Dong gave cash and red envelopes during festivals and secretly paid more than 5 million yuan to Liu Xinguang in order to secure contracts for government projects. 

May 2018: Peng Qiming Corruption Case [pdf]

Peng was the former Deputy Director of the Ruili Branch of the Fudian Bank. Peng received bribes in the amount of 1,544,580 RMB from Dong in exchange for providing ‘loan coordination’ to Jingcheng Company. Peng was sentenced to six years in prison.

September 2018: Duan Peixiang Corruption Case [pdf]

In his capacity as Deputy Director of the Management Committee of the Ruili Cross Border Economic Cooperation Zone from 2005 to 2016, Duan received 20,000 RMB from Dong. Duan was sentenced to three years in prison.

It is notable that despite being implicated in multiple criminal investigations and court cases, Dong has largely avoided censure. Although engaging in dubious business operations, such as cross-border casinos in Myanmar that have catered to Chinese clients, he has still been able to maintain a good working relationship with the state as his influence and authority in the border areas has currency on both sides of the border.

More recently, Dong Lecheng appears to have fallen on hard times. In December 2022, the Hong Kong-based iFeng news outlet published a story on Dong Lecheng, detailing the financial difficulties his companies are currently facing. According to the report he has rarely been seen publicly in China since 2020 and did not attend his father’s funeral in 2021. Numerous real estate, construction and tourism projects have gone unfinished, and according to iFeng, since 2019, employees at several of Dong’s companies in China have not been paid on time, leading many to resign, and contractors have been left chasing payment. iFeng also found that Dong Lecheng has sold assets in Cambodia, including the building where Ruili Bank’s headquarters was located and property in the ‘notorious fraud park’ Jinshui (as discussed above).

Contracting for Chinatown Buildings

As is the case with the Kaibo complex (profiled here), Yunnan Construction and Investment Holding Group (YCIH, 云南省建设投资控股集团有限公司) has been contracted to conduct construction work on Jingcheng buildings. The Haigang hotel and casino building at the centre of the complex was built by the YCIH subsidiary China National Nonferrous Metal Industry Fourteenth Metallurgical Construction Co., Ltd. (中国有色金属工业第十四冶金建设公司). The project faced difficulties and delays in construction, and company officials from Fourteenth Metallurgical headquarters visited the project numerous times for inspections during the construction between 2017 and 2019 (see, for instance, here, here, here, and here). This included visits by the YCIH Party Chief and Chairman, Chen Wenshan (陈文山). Incidentally, Chen came under investigation in Yunnan in April 2022 for serious violations of law and discipline, a common euphemism in China for corruption.

During a visit to the area by the authors in June 2022, the YCIH logo could also be seen on an active construction site directly opposite the Jinshui phase 1 compound. A YCIH subsidiary also built JC International Airlines headquarters in Phnom Penh. As noted in the Kaibo profile here, YCIH has been contracted to build a hotel in Phnom Penh for KBX Investment, one of the companies linked to the notorious Kaibo compound.

Subsidiaries of other major Chinese state-owned enterprises have provided contracting services to Jingcheng. In 2019, Sinohydro Bureau 10 and Sinohydro Bureau 14 (subsidiaries of PowerChina) were contracted for the construction of two 20-story apartments in Jinshui phase 2. The same year, Shanghai Baoye (a subsidiary of Metallurgical Corporation of China, MCC) won the bid for general contracting work on phase 2. The previous year, another MCC subsidiary, China No. 1 Metallurgical Group, signed a general contract for the construction of commercial and residential buildings ‘No. 1 to No. 5 of the Haoli Hotel’ (Haoli is the Chinese name for Golden Sun Sky).

Photos of the Jinshui construction site posted on Facebook in 2018 show banners displayed on the building from 15 different companies offering congratulations on the topping off of Jinshui phase 1. Most of these companies are in the business of building materials, construction and engineering. These included:

• 云南建设投资控股集团有限公司 (Yunnan Construction Investment Holding Group Co.. Ltd.)
• 中航钢贸（柬埔寨）有限公司 (AVIC Steel Trading (Cambodia) Co., Ltd.
• 上海宝冶（柬埔寨）有限分公司 (Shanghai Baoye (Cambodia) Co., Ltd.)

According to reports on Jingcheng’s website, it has cooperated with AVIC Leasing (中航租赁) and AVIC Steel Trading Co., Ltd. (中航钢贸公司). These companies are subsidiaries of Aviation Industry Corporation of China (中国航空工业集团公司), a Chinese state-owned aerospace and defence conglomerate, which has diversified into a range of industries. In 2018, Yunnan Construction and Investment Holding Group, AVIC and Jingcheng Group met in Cambodia to discuss the JC Airlines office building and the Haoli (Golden Sun Sky) projects, and an agreement was made for AVIC to supply building materials. A news update from the Anhui Province state-owned enterprise Conch Cement (安徽海螺水泥股份有限公司) from 2020, stated that it ‘successfully obtained projects such as “Jinshui Garden” in Cambodia’. In this case Conch presumably provided cement for construction.

Links to Other Compounds, Companies, and Individuals

Jinshui sits adjacent to Kaibo (see profile here), a notorious scam compound. There are rumours that Dong Lecheng is the ultimate owner of the Chinatown development (including Kaibo and Jinshui), although this cannot be verified. In recent years, Dong Lecheng has had numerous interactions with Kok An and his late son-in-law Rithy Samnang, both of whom are linked to Kaibo.

Kok An and Rithy Samnang, until his death, operate casinos under the Crown brand, which is linked to operations in Sihanoukville, Poipet, Kandal and Bavet. They are also linked to the Crown Hi-Tech Industrial Park which reports have linked to scam operations (profiled here).

Yunnan Construction and Investment Holding Group has been contracted for construction work on both Kaibo (see profile here) and Jingchang projects.

The brother of Rithy Samnang, Rithy Raksmei, purchased two buildings within the Jingcheng development zone and they now carry the logo of K99 Group, another company linked to scam compounds (see profile here). Dong Lecheng and Rithy Raksmei have appeared in public together on numerous occasions.

Rithy Raksmei has business links with Myanmar national Aik Paung, who is involved in Nanhai, another building known to house scam operations (profiled here).

Dong Lecheng has been associated with Wang Yong. The two collaborated on casino projects in northern Myanmar that ran illegal gambling operations. He has been photographed in Cambodia with Wang Yong, who owns Yongyuan Casino (profile here) and Bavet Moc Bai Casino (profile here). 

Updates

30 January 2023: Information on court cases updated. Links to Wang Yong added. Verdict from Alvin Chau criminal trial added. Reporting by iFeng added.

3 April 2023: Added information from Golden Sun Sky press release on completion of Haigang Hotel.

23 April: Added information on the opening of Khemarak Hotel and Xing Tian Di Casino in the Chinatown development area.

Jinshui in the News

2023

11 March: ‘昊利娱乐有限公司 海港大酒店土建顺利完工 [Civil Engineering of Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Co., Ltd. Harbor Hotel Successfully Completed].’ 柬中时报 [Cambodia-China Times]. Link.

Press release from Golden Sun Sky Entertainment announcing completion of hotel construction and inviting media to celebratory dinner at the complex.

2022

19 September: Huang, Yan 黄岩. ‘独家重磅！西港中国城凯博金水全部对外开放 [Exclusive! Sihanoukville Chinatown Kaibo and Jinshui Are Fully Open to the Public].’ 今日柬闻 [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Chinese reporter gains access to the Kaibo and Jinshui compounds after the worker exodus and observes an ‘abandoned town’.

19 September: Mech, Dara. ‘Eerie Silence Descends on Notorious Sihanoukville Scam Compounds.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Round up of a series of raids that occurred in Sihanoukville the preceding five days, and the clear out of Kaibo and Jinshui compounds.

18 September: Huang, Yan 黄岩. ‘西港最大园区被查？数百人连夜大转移 [Was the Largest Park in Sihanoukville Investigated? Hundreds of People Moved Overnight].’ 今日柬闻 [Cambodia News Today]. Link.

Initial report on the raid tip off and evacuation of the Chinatown compounds.

 23 August: Yunnan Jingcheng Co., Ltd. ‘Yunnan Jingcheng Group Co., Ltd Strongly Deny Charges of “Human Trafficking, Fraud, Cyber Fraud”].’ Khmer Times. Link.

Yunnan Jingcheng and businessman Dong Lecheng issue strongly worded statement denying claims made by Al Jazeera, Net Ease, and other media outlets that it is involved in ‘human trafficking, fraud, cyber fraud’.

18 August: ‘柬埔寨詐騙｜曾在中國捲入賭博詐騙案　轉投西港成黑金勢力三巨頭 [Cambodian Fraud: Once Involved in Gambling Fraud in China, He Took Refuge in Sihanoukville and Became One of the Top Three Black Gold Tycoons].’ Hong Kong 101. Link.

Profile of three Chinese tycoons with criminal records who took Cambodian citizenship, and because of their close relationships with Cambodian government and business, have prospered through online crime. Focuses on Xu Aimin, Dong Lecheng, and She Zhijiang.

11 August: 101 East. ‘Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves.’ Al Jazeera. Link.

Longform article focusing on the victims highlighted in below documentary. Includes a man sold to Jinshui.

14 July: 101 East. ‘Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves’. Al Jazeera. Link.

Documentary on some of the main scam compounds located in Sihanoukville and Pursat. Includes testimony from a person who claims he was sold four times between companies operating in Jinshui.

12 May: GASO. ‘拯救柬埔寨線上詐騙招聘受害者 [Rescue victims of online scam recruitment in Cambodia].’ Global Anti-Scam Organization website. Link.

Report on rescue of 16 Malaysians rescued in April 2022 (reported by Channel News Asia). Documentation from victims shows they were held at Jinshui.

10 April: Bernama. ‘16 Malaysians Duped by Fake Job Offers in Cambodia Rescued.’ Channel News Asia. Link.

16 Malaysians aged between 19 and 43 rescued in joint operation after being duped into scam compound in Cambodia.

1 April: Li, Yiming 李一鸣. ‘难以逃离的柬埔寨西港“中国城” ：被绑架被倒卖，被威胁“沉尸海底”….. [The “China Town” in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, That is Difficult to Escape: Kidnapped, Resold, Threatened to “Sink the corpse to the Bottom of the Sea” …].’ 北京青年报 [Beijing Youth Daily]. Link.

Newspaper of Beijing’s Communist Youth League reports on the situation in Chinatown, Sihanoukville, documenting the testimony of people held in the Kaibo and Jinshui compounds. Includes discussion of Dong Lecheng’s past legal issues in China. (Note: Article was removed from the internet around August 2022 but at the time of writing remains available on some websites not based in China.)

11 March: Mech, Dara and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘Crimes in Shadows: Sihanoukville’s Grisly Reports, Pressure on Journalists.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Review of crime reports from past two years include six cases of bodies found in public locations or washed up on the beach, 19 homicides, assaults, and firearms cases, 11 cases of extortion and detention, along with other serious crimes. Includes serious crimes in Chinatown area.

18 February: Mech, Dara, Cindy Liu, and Danielle Keeton-Olsen. ‘Victims Allege Sihanoukville Precincts With Ties to Major Businesses Are Sites of Scams, Torture, Detention.’ Voice of Democracy. Link (if inaccessible, view on Wayback Machine here).

Reports on cases of forced labour and human trafficking connected to scam compounds in Sihanoukville, including those located in Chinatown.

18 February: Nop Meechukhun. ‘Group of 32 Thai Nationals Rescued by Cambodian Authorities after Reportedly Unlawfully Being Detained in Rooms While Being Smuggled for Work in Cambodia.’ The Pattaya News. Link.

32 Thai nationals rescued from Chinatown by Cambodian military and police, after reportedly being smuggled into the country and held in a compound.

17 February: Gu, Yuebing 顾月冰. ‘逃离柬埔寨“网赌之城”[Escape from Cambodia’s “City of Online Casinos”].’ 南方周末 [Southern Weekly]. Link.

Chinese media reports on the scale of online scams operating from Sihanoukville and the conditions in which people are forced to work. Names several compounds as sites for online scam companies, including ‘Jinshui Chinatown’.

2021

21 October: Kong, Arey. ‘Saved from “hell”: 41 Foreigners Freed from Clutches of China Project Ring.’ Khmer Times. Link.

41 Indonesian nationals rescued from Jinshui by Cambodian police after request from Indonesian Embassy.

26 September: Haider, Husain. ‘Sihanoukville’s Dirty Secret: Dark Rumours and Inside Information Raise Questions about The China Project.’ Khmer Times. Link.

Investigation by Khmer Times finds that at its peak, a “10-building complex” in the Chinatown area held some 12,000 people, mostly Chinse, but also other nationalities. The compound is sealed and people are not permitted to leave. The article refers to the complex as “The China Project”, but it fits the description of the Jinshui compound.

10 September: Haider, Husain. ‘Bloody but Unbowed: The China Project Ploughs on Despite Public Scrutiny of Highly Disturbing Claims of Criminality.’ Khmer Times. Link.

Following its reports on Chinatown, Khmer Times received information from multiple sources who reported experiences working for companies at Jinshui, with people claiming to have been taken hostage, beaten, starved, isolated, extorted, sexually abused, and trafficked.

25 August: Haider, Husain. ‘Dark Allegations: Sinister Claims Made about “The China Project” in Sihanoukville.’ Khmer Times. Link.

Report on Chinatown area (erroneously called The China Project in article). Reports four Filipinos who previously worked at a ‘10-building complex’ (presumably Jinshui), and had their passports taken and were trained to scam people online.

26 July: ‘Facebook Jobs Scam: Some Released, Others Still Held in Sihanoukville.’ Cambodia News English. Link.

Following media reports on Filipino woman held against her will in Chinatown area, several people released. One of the released told media that others remain inside, including several African women.

26 July: ‘Foreign Women Illegally Detained After Answering Facebook Job Ads.’ Cambodia News English. Link.

English reporting of Philippines national held against her will in Chinatown complex after responding to a Facebook job recruitment ad.

26 July: Soy, Sopheap. ‘ករណីជួញដូរមនុស្ស នៅខេត្តព្រះសីហនុ ទៅរកការងារ បែរជាត្រូវបង្ខាំងមនុស្សទុក បង្អត់បាយ ដកលិខិតឆ្លងដែន និងទូរស័ព្ទ’ [Human Trafficking Case in Sihanoukville to Work, People Were Detained, Deprived of Food, Confiscated Passports and Telephones]. DAP News. Link.

Khmer language media reports husband of Philippines national reported his wife being held against her will in Chinatown complex after responding to a Facebook job recruitment ad.