BANGKOK
\nThailand has struck multiple casinos linked to cyberscamming in neighbouring Cambodia during an almost two-week-long border conflict, with the prime minister saying he would \u201ctake care\u201d of fronts for fraud operations.
\nAcross Southeast 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.
\nCambodia 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.<\/p>\n
At least four casinos on Cambodia\u2019s border with Thailand — two which monitors have identified as scam hubs — have been struck this month in a military conflict between the neighbours that has killed dozens and displaced more than half a million.
\nUN human rights chief Volker Turk said Thursday that trafficked foreign nationals forced to carry out scams in Cambodia were \u201cnow exposed to further risk by the fighting\u201d, and called for their evacuation. But efforts to make peace with Cambodia rested on Phnom Penh\u2019s commitment to \u201cdestroy scamming attempts\u201d, Thailand\u2019s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters at an international anti-scam conference in Bangkok on Wednesday.
\nIf casinos in Cambodia were hiding fraud operations behind their doors, \u201cthen we will regard it as a scamming centre that we need to take care of\u201d, he said. Rights abuses in Cambodia\u2019s scam centres are happening on a \u201cmass scale\u201d, and the government\u2019s poor response suggested its complicity, said a June report by Amnesty International.
\nBut Ros Phirun, secretary general of Cambodia\u2019s Commercial Gambling Management Commission, told media that authorities were taking \u201cserious action\u201d to crack down on scams, and called Thailand\u2019s action on the border casinos \u201ctotally illegal\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BANGKOK Thailand has struck multiple casinos linked to cyberscamming in neighbouring Cambodia during an almost two-week-long border conflict, with the prime minister saying he would \u201ctake care\u201d of fronts for fraud operations. Across Southeast Asia, criminal gangs have used casinos, hotels and fortified compounds to carry out sophisticated cyberscams, according to the UN Office on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-521019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n