Cambodia says it has extradited a billionaire businessman to China accused of masterminding a massive cryptocurrency scam in which trafficked workers were lured into forced labor camps to defraud victims around the world.
Cambodia said Chen Zhi was among three Chinese nationals arrested on January 6 following a joint investigation into transnational crime that lasted several months.
Last October, the United States charged a 37-year-old man with running an internet scam out of Cambodia that it said stole billions of dollars in cryptocurrency. The UK also imposed sanctions on his global business empire, the Prince Group..
Cambodian authorities also suspended the operations of Prince Bank, a subsidiary of the Prince Group.
The bank has been liquidated and is barred from offering new banking services, although customers can still withdraw money and repay loans, the National Bank of Cambodia said on Thursday.
Last year, US authorities Around $15bn (£10.4bn) worth of bitcoins seized it allegedly belonged to Chen, in what FBI Director Cash Patel called “one of the largest financial fraud exposures in history.”
The BBC has contacted the Prince Group for comment. In the past, the Cambodian group has denied involvement in the scam. The company's website says its businesses include real estate development as well as financial and consumer services.
Since the United States indicted Chen Zhi in October for fraud and money laundering, his whereabouts remain unclear.
But on Wednesday, Cambodian authorities said they had “arrested three Chinese nationals, namely Chen Zhi, Xu Ji Liang and Shao Ji Hui, and extradited them.” [them] to the People's Republic of China.” The Interior Ministry statement did not specify where Chen Zhi was detained.
Last month, his Cambodian citizenship was revoked by royal decree. The mysterious tycoon renounced his Chinese citizenship and became a Cambodian citizen in 2014.
The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to Southeast Asia, many of them to Cambodia, lured by promises of legitimate work and then forced into online scams.
People are being held against their will on scam farms and forced to scam strangers online under threat of punishment or torture. Many of those trapped are Chinese and target people in China.
Fraud centers have spread across Southeast Asia. The photo above shows people rescued from camps in Myanmar last February arriving in Thailand. [EPA]
Chinese authorities have also been secretly investigating the Prince Group since at least 2020. In a number of court cases, the company has been accused of using online fraud schemes.
The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has set up a task force to investigate the Prince Group, calling it “a large transnational online gambling syndicate based in Cambodia.”
US authorities accuse Chen Zhi of turning the Prince Group into one of Asia's largest transnational criminal organizations. [AFP via Getty Images]
Cambodia's ruling elite has been close to Chen Zhi for many years. The government has said little since the US and UK imposed sanctions on the Prince Group, other than calling on US and UK authorities to ensure they have sufficient evidence to support their allegations.
By some estimates, the scam business could account for about half of Cambodia's entire economy.
“I think it's the scale of his operations that really sets Chen Zhi apart,” Jack Adamovich Davis, a journalist who has investigated Chen Zhi, told the BBC last year.
He said it was shocking that the Prince Group had been able to establish a “global presence” without raising alarm bells given the serious criminal charges it now faces.
Additional reporting by Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head
