Cambodia 20260302

Mekong Memo Cambodia Weekly: Business, politics, finance, trade & legal news.

Mar 02, 2026

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Headlines:

Kingpin? What Kingpin?

Freed from the Compounds, Stranded on the Streets

Fighting in Geneva, Surveying at Home

Come Visit (If You Dare)

Fourteen Years for a Photograph

Bad Debt, Meet Your New Landlord

Latchford's Loot Comes Home

One Out, Ninety-Seven Still In

Paris Calls on Phnom Penh

Tehran Burns, Fuel Bills Rise

FTAs Shield Nothing When Dumping Probes Land

Trial Starts After Time Already Served

Big Beer's Free-Pour

Kingpin? What Kingpin?

Prime Minister Hun Manet told AFP in Brussels last week that scam centres had been supportive of Cambodia's property sector even as he insisted that the state saw none of the profits, before claiming he had no idea that his former adviser Chen Zhi was running one of Asia's largest fraud operations. "We did not know that he was a kingpin," he said. Chen, chairman of Prince Group and formerly an adviser to both Hun Manet and his father Hun Sen, was arrested in January and extradited to China after U.S. authorities indicted him and seized roughly $14 billion in bitcoin they said was tied to illicit proceeds. The scam economy generates an estimated $12.5 billion yearly, equivalent to roughly half the Cambodia’s formal GDP. The government now claims scam activity has dropped by half since the pace of crackdowns rose in January.

Read more: South China Morning Post (state profit denial), Cambodia Investment Review, CamboJA News (Chen Zhi denials), Cambodianess (April deadline operation)

Freed from the Compounds, Stranded on the Streets

Hundreds of foreign workers who have fled scam compounds since the crackdowns say they’re sleeping rough in Phnom Penh with no money, no passports, and nobody much interested in helping. Amnesty International called the situation an "international crisis on Cambodian soil," saying that victims from more than 50 countries are stuck. Embassies have been slow to respond, and NGO capacity has been stretched thin by a year of funding cuts. One Ethiopian survivor spent 18 months trapped in compounds in Myanmar before a chronic illness got him released. In Myanmar, authorities are holding rescued workers in makeshift detention for weeks; in Cambodia, trafficking survivors are fending for themselves on city streets.

Fighting in Geneva, Surveying at Home

Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn told the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday that Thai troops must leave what the government calls “occupied territory” before nearly a million displaced civilians can return home. He says last year's border clashes are as much a human rights crisis as a sovereignty spat. The two rounds of fighting in July and December killed more than 100 and emptied villages in the contested zone. Thailand's foreign minister fired back at the same Geneva session, making claims that Preah Vihear temple had been used as a military outpost during the fighting, a claim Phnom Penh flatly denies. Despite the public jawboning, both countries are set to send joint survey teams to contested areas this month under their Joint Border Committee, the first step toward demarcation since the ceasefire.

Read more: CamboJA News (UN forum cited), Khmer Times

Come Visit (If You Dare)

Cambodia's tourism board chief is courting Hong Kong travel agencies as part of a push to revive arrivals, but operators aren't biting. Tourist numbers dropped by a third in Q3 2025 vs the year prior, as Hong Kong agencies say safety fears haven't gone anywhere. The Kingdom relies on tourism for almost 10% of GDP, making the slump more than a PR problem. The decline hit as the border fighting with Thailand kicked off last summer, but the real damage is the result ofyears of scam compound stories that have turned Angkor Wat's kingdom into shorthand for getting kidnapped.

Fourteen Years for a Photograph

A Phnom Penh court sentenced journalists Phorn Sopheap and Pheap Pheara to fourteen years in prison for treason after they appeared in a photo near Ta Krabei Temple in Oddar Meanchey province. The picture, taken last July near the Thai border, showed what appeared to be anti-personnel landmines in the background. Thai media published it as evidence that Cambodian forces had laid new mines during the border fighting, violating the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that both countries have ratified. The conviction came days after Prime Minister Hun Manet gave a rare interview to Reuters about the border situation, and days after the arrest of another journalist. At least two other journalists are up on charges for covering the conflict, including one who was arrested for reporting on an alleged water shortage among frontline troops. The convictions effectively make the border zone a reporting blackout area; the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have both spoken up to condemn the sentences.

Bad Debt, Meet Your New Landlord

Cambodia's NPL ratio hit nearly 9% last year, a 10-year high, so the National Bank did what central banks do when the pile gets uncomfortable and created somewhere to put it. Regulations issued this month set up a formal registration system for asset management institutions (the polite term for "bad banks") to buy non-performing loans from banks and microfinance lenders. The new entrants need 200 billion riels (about $50 million) in capital and NBC approval before they acquire the distressed assets. Some 3.8 million households now hold microloans worth more than $18 billion, more than double the level seven years ago, and Panda Bank just had its license pulled this week over what the central bank called a deteriorating financial condition. Whether investors will bite is a separate question. Resolving bad loans through Cambodia's courts typically takes years, leaving asset managers funding problem loans with no clear path to liquidity.

Latchford's Loot Comes Home

Seventy-four artifacts went on display at Phnom Penh's National Museum on February 27, including sandstone sculptures from King Jayavarman II's ninth-century reign and a bronze Bakheng-style piece, all returned from the estate of Douglas Latchford, the British dealer who was indicted in 2019 for allegedly running a decades-long smuggling operation out of war-torn Cambodia. Latchford died in 2020 at 88 before he could face charges, but his family signed an agreement that year to return items that had been pried off temple walls during the civil wars and Khmer Rouge years before being sold to Western collectors. This is the third major return from his collection, following repatriations in 2021 and 2023.

Read more: AP News, VietnamPlus (civil war context), Khmer Times

One Out, Ninety-Seven Still In

Opposition leader Sun Chanthy walked free Tuesday after King Norodom Sihamoni pardoned his incitement conviction, lifting both his two-year sentence and a lifetime ban from holding office. Chanthy had spent more than a year in a Pursat correctional center for social media posts criticizing the ruling party's IDPoor card policy, arrested at Phnom Penh's airport in May 2024 after meeting Cambodian workers in Japan. The pardon restores his voting rights and clears him to run for office again, a rare deal in a country where Licadho counts 97 "prisoners of interest" still behind bars, from politicians and environmentalists to journalists jailed for activism or speech. Another opposition leader, Kem Sokha, is still under lengthy house arrest, and five Mother Nature Cambodia activists are still dealing with their ongoing trials.

Paris Calls on Phnom Penh

France floated a partnership agreement with Phnom Penh that would expand military training and defense cooperation, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told his counterpart Prak Sokhonn in Paris on Feb. 25. France already has three military advisers on the ground and has trained Cambodian soldiers in mine clearance and peacekeeping, but the relationship remains limited compared to some of Paris's other partnerships like those with Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia. France defines itself as an "Indo-Pacific Nation" thanks to territories that account for 90 percent of its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone, and it wants full membership at the ASEAN+ Defense Ministers' Meeting, where it currently has observer status.

Tehran Burns, Fuel Bills Rise

US and Israeli strikes on Iran sent Cambodia's fuel importers scrambling over the weekend as oil markets reacted to the possibility of a supply disruption. Crude prices hovering around $70 per barrel could more than double to $150 if the conflict goes off the rails. The real risk is the Strait of Hormuz because tanker traffic has plummeted, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards are warning that the waterway is unsafe because of US and Israeli attacks. For a country that imports all of its refined fuel, any sustained price rise will quickly impact prices of transportation and food.

FTAs Shield Nothing When Dumping Probes Land

Free trade agreements won't protect exporters from anti-dumping or countervailing duty investigations, Edwin Vanderbruggen of Andersen told a EuroCham session in Phnom Penh. Even zero-tariff access can be wiped out if and when authorities decide that export prices undercut "normal value" in a home market. With $45 billion in yearly regional trade riding on tariff preferences, the gap between FTA benefits and trade remedy exposure is getting harder to ignore, especially for Cambodia's rice and bicycle exporters, both of which have had to deal with EU investigations in recent years.

Trial Starts After Time Already Served

Nine activists detained since July 2024 over planned protests against the CLV-DTA agreement appeared in Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday over incitement charges for social media posts and organizing plans. The prosecutor called their commentary "fake news" that could anger the public; defense lawyers argued it was constitutionally protected speech about a now-scrapped development pact. Bizarrely, many of the 37 defendants have already served more than half of the two-year maximum sentence while awaiting trial.

Big Beer's Free-Pour

A documentary premiering at CPH:DOX on March 12 shows Carlsberg and Heineken running marketing tactics in Cambodia that would violate their own European codes of conduct. The film follows activist Kim Eng's fight for a national alcohol law in a country that has no legal drinking age and barely enforced directives, and where consumption has jumped fivefold in two decades. Beer ads blanket Phnom Penh, and promoters gladly hand out cash prizes and use young "beer girls" to push product.

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