Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday acknowledged foreign workers had been lured and trafficked to Cambodia amid ongoing police raids against criminal scam operations that have now reached Siem Reap.
Oknha Duong Ngeap took $120,000 per Cambodian citizenship for Chinese and Taiwanese clients, he told the Phnom Penh court on Thursday.
Hundreds of foreign nationals have been removed from Phnom Penh compounds as police acknowledged detention, torture, extortion and human trafficking in several arrests.
The Preah Sihanouk provincial administration said a boat carrying 41 Chinese nationals sank off the coast of Koh Tang, with 18 rescued at the time and another passenger found after a day.
On Thursday morning, the Khmer Rouge tribunal upheld all but two of a slew of convictions against former regime head of state Khieu Samphan, effectively ending the court’s judicial proceedings.
Indonesian nationals rescued from a Phnom Penh scam compound say they were targeting Facebook users every day to cheat them out of thousands of dollars. Most are relieved to have gotten away from the criminal work and threat of violence that hovered over them.
Tens of thousands of people from across Asia have been coerced into defrauding people in America and around the world out of millions of dollars. Those who resist face beatings, food deprivation or worse.
Nearly 9,000 phones were seized from a Sihanoukville compound and barbed wire cut from the notorious “Chinatown” area. As human trafficking raids target compounds across the city, residents say other buildings appear to be quietly emptying of foreign workers.
More than 60 Vietnamese nationals attempted to flee a Bavet city casino on Saturday, as regional media report more arrests and raids tied to forced labor and fraud operations in Cambodia.
Thousands of viewers have circulated a video online of a woman pleading in Khmer for rescue from forced labor at a Sihanoukville scam center.
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