Cambodia says scam compounds have been eradicated, but rights groups remain sceptical

Cambodia has said it has eliminated the scam compounds that turned parts of the country into a major centre for cybercrime, but the claim has been met with scepticism from rights groups and industry experts. Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, who heads the government's ad hoc Commission for Combating Online Scams, told 50 foreign diplomats and international officials on Thursday that large-scale scam activity had been brought fully under control. A statement released on Friday said there were currently no online scam compounds remaining in the country.

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The government said the result followed what it described as the complete eradication of large-scale online scam operations, strict legal action against perpetrators, networks and involved officials, and the creation of a cybersecurity legal framework. It also said criminal groups had shifted to decentralised activity, operating from guesthouses, condominiums, rental houses, vehicles and coffee shops. Authorities said they would continue to target those smaller-scale operations, which they say remain a concern even after the closure of the larger compounds.

The statement said law enforcement investigated 793 suspected locations and raided 624 sites between July 2025 and 20 August 2026, detaining nearly 30,000 people. It did not provide a full breakdown of those detained or say how many had been charged. The claim could not be independently verified, and rights groups warned that the industry may not have been eliminated in practice.

Amnesty International's co-regional director, Montse Ferrer, said she was highly sceptical that the scamming compound industry had been effectively ended. The issue matters because the scam-compound economy has been linked to organised criminal networks and cross-border trafficking, and it has drawn scrutiny across Southeast Asia. The compounds have been largely run by Chinese criminal syndicates and have spread across Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines and border areas between Myanmar and Thailand since the pandemic.

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Cambodia's announcement is therefore being watched not only as a domestic law-enforcement claim, but also as part of a wider regional effort to disrupt a criminal model that has adapted quickly to pressure. Experts said the key test is whether those behind the operations are investigated and prosecuted, rather than whether individual sites are shut down. Mark Taylor, an independent anti-trafficking consultant, said there were credible indicators that significant scamming operations continue and that recruitment of foreign workers into Cambodia for scamming work also continues.

That assessment reflects a broader concern that criminal groups may be dispersing rather than disappearing, making enforcement harder to monitor and verify. For now, the main uncertainty is whether the government's figures reflect a lasting dismantling of the scam-compound network or only a shift in tactics. The statement itself acknowledged that decentralised operations remain active in less visible locations, which suggests the problem may be changing form rather than ending.

What happens next will depend on whether authorities can sustain prosecutions, prevent regrouping and show independently verifiable evidence that the criminal networks have been broken up.

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