Cambodia says it has dismantled its large-scale scam compounds, but it has not presented significant new evidence to prove it.
Prime Minister Hun Manet said Wednesday that the country had 'completely dismantled all large-scale scam compounds in the kingdom.' He made the remark at a conference on tackling cyberscams, where Cambodia is hosting the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and Interpol.
The government took reporters to a few empty scam compounds Tuesday to showcase its efforts to close them. Cambodia declared success in August after shutting down hundreds of scam compounds.
Hun Manet and other speakers said no country could tackle the issue alone and called for joint efforts. Officials also said organized syndicates could fragment into smaller decentralized operations.
Experts were more cautious. Mark Taylor, an anti-trafficking consultant and former head of an anti-trafficking program in Cambodia, said the government has 'indeed closed most of the large compounds,' but has done 'comparably little' to dismantle the criminal organizations behind them or to investigate and punish Cambodian business and political elites who protected and profited from the operations.
Brian Mast, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is one of two congressional leaders who has called for considering sanctions on key Cambodian political figures, including deputy prime minister Neth Savoeun, over their alleged links to scam center operations.
The scale of the fraud is enormous. Cyberscam operations grew especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in July that estimates of combined losses ranged from $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025.
Victims have lost tens of billions to scams carried out by hundreds of thousands of people forced to keep the schemes going, according to the report.
The numbers come first. A government can shut doors and stage photo-ops, but the market for this kind of criminal activity does not disappear until the people who run it face real consequences. Empty buildings are not the same thing as rule of law.
Capital rewards clear rules, and free enterprise cannot function where fraud is protected by political convenience. If Cambodia wants credibility, it will need prosecutions, not just declarations. Power leaves a paper trail, and the world is still asking who profited, who protected them, and who pays when the scam compounds simply move next door.
