Cambodian businessman uncovered in BBC Eye on-line rip-off investigation arrested | EUROtoday

Cambodian authorities have arrested a distinguished businessman featured in a 2023 BBC Eye investigation into alleged on-line rip-off operations as a part of a wider effort to deal with organised on-line fraud.

Kuong Li, a 50-year-old Cambodian nationwide, was charged with unlawful recruitment for exploitation, aggravated fraud, organised crime and cash laundering regarding alleged offences dedicated in Cambodia and elsewhere since 2019.

On 15 January, a Phnom Penh courtroom ordered him to be remanded in custody pending additional proceedings.

Kuong Li was featured in The Pig Butchering Romance Scam, a BBC Eye investigation into allegations of human trafficking and fraud inside rip-off compounds in South East Asia.

That programme, broadcast in March 2023, targeted partially on the Huang Le compound, a venue beneath Kuong Li’s possession within the coastal metropolis of Sihanoukville.

The documentary adopted the account of ‘Didi’, a Chinese man who stated he left dwelling after being promised a well-paid job, however was trafficked into Cambodia and compelled to work contained in the walled compound.

Didi stated he was made to work from 20:00 to 08:00 native time (13:00 to 01:00 GMT), focusing on victims in Europe and the United States, and was not permitted to depart the complicated.

He additionally shared secretly recorded footage with the BBC and the Global Anti-Scam Organisation (Gaso), a volunteer-run group that helps rescue and assist trafficked victims.

In a video diary recorded inside his dormitory, Didi stated he was advised to “keep scamming as long as you’re alive”, and that he’d witnessed one other sufferer being overwhelmed and dragged out of the workplace after making a mistake.

In desperation, Didi tried to flee by leaping from the third ground. He later took shelter in a protected home in Phnom Penh, earlier than finally returning to China.

Three years after the documentary was broadcast, he’s now working in a manufacturing unit in southern China.

The investigation additionally featured testimony from one other Chinese man, Mi Lijun, who stated he turned severely sick whereas being held on the compound. He was discovered deserted on a freeway and brought to hospital. The BBC obtained footage of his closing hours earlier than he died from organ failure.

The documentary recognized Kuong Li because the proprietor of the Huang Le compound and reported that his enterprise empire coated actual property, casinos, motels and building corporations. He had beforehand been awarded the royal honorific title ‘Oknha’ and had been pictured alongside senior officers at private and non-private occasions.

The BBC put these allegations to Kuong Li and the Sihanoukville province police. Neither responded to the request for remark earlier than the documentary was broadcast.

In April 2023, nonetheless, the Cambodian authorities issued a letter in response to the programme, confirming Kuong Li because the proprietor of the Huang Le compound however dismissing the allegations as “groundless”.

The letter stated an investigation led by the Department of Anti-Commercial Gambling Crime on 8 February 2023 had “found no sign of forced captivity or torture”, and claimed the documentary didn’t replicate what it described because the authorities’ “utmost efforts” to stop and get rid of all types of human trafficking.

Kuong Li additionally rejected the allegations in interviews with Cambodian media.

In June 2023, Kuong Li was granted the title ‘Neak Oknha’, certainly one of Cambodia’s highest royal honorifics, a rank above his earlier title of ‘Oknha’.

While Kuong Li stays in pre-trial detention, Cambodian authorities say investigations are persevering with into wider networks linked to organised on-line fraud.

The Secretariat of the Commission for Combating Cybercrime stated Cambodian courts dealt with 37 main circumstances between 2025 and mid-January 2026, ensuing within the conviction of 172 ringleaders and accomplices.

One high-profile case concerned the extradition of Chen Zhi earlier this yr. The Chinese businessman and billionaire is accused of masterminding an enormous on-line rip-off community, trafficking staff into pressured labour camps to defraud victims globally.

The transfer was broadly seen as a sign that Phnom Penh was responding to mounting worldwide strain to handle rip-off compounds and associated monetary crime working inside its borders.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Hun Manet stated on Facebook that Cambodia considers “fighting tech-savvy crimes” a precedence and goals at “eliminating all negative issues related to online scam crimes”.

The United Nations estimates that a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals have been trafficked to South East Asia – in lots of circumstances to Cambodia – with guarantees of well-paid jobs, earlier than being pressured to run on-line scams in harsh circumstances inside confined compounds.

Across the area, governments have launched parallel crackdowns on on-line rip-off operations and the monetary networks that assist them.

In Thailand, authorities have intensified investigations into money-laundering linked to rip-off centres, seizing property and arresting suspects accused of shifting illicit funds by means of banks, cryptocurrency platforms, and shell corporations.

Meanwhile, in Myanmar, authorities have carried out raids on a number of high-profile rip-off hubs, detaining 1000’s of individuals and dismantling amenities accused of operating large-scale on-line fraud schemes.

Many of those websites had been linked to transnational legal networks working throughout a number of international locations within the area.