Cambodia’s parliament has passed legislation on compounds used to defraud victims through scams, including those involving cryptocurrency.
In Friday’s announcement, the Senate of the Kingdom of Cambodia announced that the house unanimously passed the bill without amendments, with 58 senators voting in favor. According to reports, the bill, which will require the king’s consent before it comes into force, superimposed two to five years in prison and up to $125,000 in fines for certain crimes, or twice as much prison time and fines for gang membership or attacking multiple victims.
“The bill provides for the creation of criminal provisions to fill gaps and omissions in the existing law, which will significantly contribute to meeting challenges that pose serious risks to social security, the economy and citizens, including those affecting Cambodia’s reputation, and will also improve the effectiveness of the fight against fraud through technological systems, with the aim of contributing to the preservation and protection of public safety and order and improving the effectiveness of cooperation in combating this crime,” reads a translation of Friday’s Senate notification on the bill.
According to the 2025 report report from the U.S. Department of State, the Cambodian government “often downplayed fraud cases as labor disputes,” never arresting or prosecuting any facility owner or operator suspected of fraud. Operations in Cambodia are just some of many in parts of Southeast Asia where manufacturing plants are located alleged sources of forced labor.
Related: UK sanctions $20 billion fraud market, severing ‘legitimate’ cryptocurrency ties
The adoption of the act followed the British authorities sanctioning operators of a fraud center in Cambodia and the country extraditing to China the leader of a crime syndicate allegedly linked to fraud. Cambodia’s National Assembly introduced the bill on March 30, with all 112 members voting in favor.
What is going on in these scams?
According to the 2024 UN News report examined In one elaborate in the Philippines, fraud centers like those covered by the Cambodian law were massive operations whose facilities were designed so that residents never had to leave them. While many workers were responsible for committing fraud, they were also “people transported here, held against their will” and “exposed to violence” on site.
“The people who work here are essentially isolated from the outside world,” the report says. “All their daily needs are taken care of. There are restaurants, dorms, barbershops and even a karaoke bar. So people don’t really have to leave and can stay here for months.”
