Accused scam boss Chen Zhi has been extradited to China from Cambodia, Beijing confirmed on Thursday, after he was indicted by the United States over alleged multibillion-dollar fraud.
Video released by China’s Ministry of Public Security on Thursday showed Chen in handcuffs as security forces lifted a black bag off his head, after he was escorted off a China Southern plane with black-clad armed guards waiting on a runway.
Cambodia said earlier on Thursday that the bank founded by Chen, Prince Bank, had been put into liquidation.
The bank is a subsidiary of Chen’s Prince Holding Group, one of Cambodia’s biggest conglomerates, which Washington alleges has served as a front for “one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal organizations”.
China’s public security ministry said Chen had been brought back to China from Phnom Penh and lauded the “major achievement in China–Cambodia law enforcement cooperation”.
Chinese authorities will soon issue arrest warrants for “the first batch of key members of Chen Zhi’s criminal group, and will resolutely apprehend the fugitives”, it said in a statement.
The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC), the Southeast Asian country’s central bank, said Prince Bank had been placed into liquidation and “suspended from providing new banking services, including accepting deposits and providing credit”.
It said in a statement auditor Morisonkak MKA has been appointed as liquidator. Prince Bank has about a billion dollars in assets under management, according to its website.
Customers “can withdraw money normally” and borrowers “must continue to fulfill their obligations”, the NBC said.
Chinese-born Chen was sanctioned by Washington and London in October for directing alleged cyberfraud run by hundreds of scammers trafficked into compounds in Cambodia.
Cambodian authorities said they arrested Chen and two other Chinese nationals this week and extradited them at China’s request.
Chinese courts have sentenced people to death over involvement in scams, including more than a dozen people last year for their participation in criminal groups with fraud operations in Myanmar’s Kokang region, which borders China.
The US Justice Department declined to comment on Wednesday.
Jacob Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center, said the “vast majority” of the dozens of scam compounds in Cambodia operated with “strong support” from the government
“This arrest comes after months of building pressure against the Cambodian government for continuing to harbor and abet a now famous criminal actor,” Sims told AFP.
A change in status quo could only happen if international pressure on Cambodia’s “scam-invested oligarchs” was sustained, he said.
Cambodian officials deny allegations of government involvement and say authorities are cracking down.
However, Amnesty International said last year that rights abuses in scam hubs were happening on a “mass scale”, and the government’s poor response suggested its complicity.
Chen was charged by US authorities of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges involving approximately 127,271 seized bitcoin, worth more than $11 billion at current prices.
Prince Group has denied the allegations.
Prince Bank and a law firm that issued a statement on the group’s behalf in November did not respond immediately to AFP requests for comment.
US prosecutors accused Chen of presiding over compounds in Cambodia where trafficked workers carried out cryptocurrency fraud schemes that netted billions.
Victims were targeted through “pig butchering” scams -- investment schemes that build trust over time before stealing funds.
The operations have caused billions in global losses.
Scam centres across Cambodia, Myanmar and the region lure foreign nationals -- many Chinese -- with fake job ads, then force them under threat of violence to commit online fraud.
Amnesty International has identified at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia alone, where rights groups say criminal networks perpetrate human trafficking, forced labour, torture and slavery.
Experts estimate tens of thousands of people work in the multibillion-dollar industry, some willingly and others trafficked.
Prince Group has operated across more than 30 countries since 2015 under the guise of legitimate real estate, financial services and consumer businesses, US prosecutors have said.
Prince Bank opened in 2015 as a microfinance institution and became a commercial bank in 2018.
In Cambodia, Chen served as an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, former leader Hun Sen, but his Cambodian nationality was revoked in December.
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