News analysis

Border casinos caught in Thailand-Cambodia crossfire

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A photo taken on Dec 13 shows damage to a casino caused by Thai strikes in Pursat Province, amid clashes along the Cambodia-Thailand border.

PHOTO: AFP

BANGKOK – Thailand has struck multiple casinos linked to cyberscamming in neighbouring Cambodia during an almost two-week-long border conflict, with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul saying he would “take care” of fronts for fraud operations.

Across South-east Asia, criminal gangs have used casinos, hotels and fortified compounds to carry out sophisticated cyberscams, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, often relying on trafficked people.

Cambodia hosts dozens of the scam centres with an estimated 100,000 people – many victims of human trafficking – perpetrating online scams in a multibillion-dollar industry.

At least four casinos on Cambodia’s border with Thailand – two which monitors have identified as scam hubs – have been struck in December in a

military conflict between the neighbours

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said on Dec 18 that trafficked foreign nationals forced to carry out scams in Cambodia were “now exposed to further risk by the fighting”, and called for their evacuation.

But efforts to make peace with Cambodia rested on Phnom Penh’s commitment to “destroy scamming attempts”, Mr Charnvirakul told reporters at an international anti-scam conference in Bangkok on Dec 17.

If casinos in Cambodia were hiding fraud operations behind their doors, “then we will regard it as a scamming centre that we need to take care of”, he said.

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