ល្ខោន​កែទម្រង់៖ កុំ​ឲ្យ​ចូល​តាម​សន្យា​បង្ក្រាប​ឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្ម​តាម​អ៊ីនធឺណិត​របស់​កម្ពុជា

 A closer look at this week’s “leaked” directive reveals a well-rehearsed strategy to consolidate elite criminal control and stave off external pressure.

This week, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered local officials and police to dismantle scam compounds across the country. The directive implores provincial governors to address the issue – itself a tacit admission of the widespread nature of the problem and the abject failure of the many past similar “crackdowns.”

Within hours, raids were staged, hundreds of foreign nationals were rounded up (Hun Manet today claimed more than 1,000 arrests), and an array of officials declared to state media outlets their resolve to tackle a scourge of human trafficking and cybercrime that has turned Cambodia into a global epicenter of transnational crime.

First and foremost, the notion that the prime minister’s order is a “leaked document” is ridiculous. The directive (which merely tells law enforcement to do the things they already should have been doing) is performative and should not be read as an inside look into a genuine internal effort to clean house. To understand what’s happening, we must be clear about who these theatrics are really for – and what it reveals about the regime.

The directive’s primary audience is international: Western embassies, trade negotiators, and regional governments, particularly those still clinging to the illusion that the Cambodian regime is a legitimate state actor, interested in good-faith engagement and global economic integration.

As with previous staged “crackdowns,” this latest campaign is designed to provide diplomatic cover – not to dismantle the scam industry, but to preserve it.

Why now? Several overlapping pressures help explain the timing.

The directive and choreographed crackdowns that are now unfolding come amid intensifying international pressure. As I unpacked earlier this week, Thailand, after years of tolerating criminal operations based in the Cambodian border town of Poipet, has pivoted sharply in recent weeks – seizing assets, issuing an arrest warrant for a senator for the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) tied to scam operations, and hinting at further moves that could threaten the Cambodian patronage networks that are closely linked with the scam centers.

Some of this is emerging from the ongoing border dispute, but Thailand’s shifted posture is also likely related to the high-level Chinese delegation that is currently in Bangkok. U.S. trade negotiators, meanwhile, may be quietly leveraging the scams issue in bilateral talks. Cambodia also faces the likely embarrassment of yet another Tier 3 designation in the State Department’s upcoming Trafficking in Persons Report (due later this month) and may be looking to counter that coming scrutiny.

Historically, the harms from Cambodia’s myriad state-run criminal industries were contained domestically – Cambodian forests destroyed, Cambodian sands, oil, and minerals pilfered, Cambodian villagers’ land stolen, Cambodian workers exploited, Cambodian orphans trafficked, etc. But today is different. With a state-sponsored cybercrime industry netting $12-19 billion annually and targeting every country in the world, the world is finally waking up to Cambodian state predation.

In effect, the last thing the CPP wants is coordinated multilateral action against its scam economy and by some measures, the risks of such an outcome have never been higher.

So, Phnom Penh is reaching for a familiar playbook. Over the past decade, “show crackdowns” have been one of the key mechanisms by which the CPP protects and consolidates its criminal industries. My May 2025 US government-funded report offers a comprehensive taxonomy of the various “mechanisms” of Cambodian state involvement in transnational crime, of which “show crackdowns” are one (see Appendix B). Staged raids and arrests temporarily ease international pressure and allow the ruling elite to eliminate competitors, further monopolizing criminal profits.

This isn’t just my analysis though. Criminals active in the industry seem to be echoing the sentiment. “Everyone, everyone, don’t panic. The big parks are still stable. It won’t affect your keyboard…” noted one Telegram user, suggesting: 1) close coordination between Cambodian officials and the compounds in advance of the directive; and 2) that larger compounds (generally those owned by more politically connected elites) are unlikely to be impacted despite the saber rattling from the ruling family.

Moreover, this pattern has been evident for years, from sham forestry crackdowns that enriched well-connected logging tycoons to earlier anti-scam raids that simply transferred control of compounds to actors closer to the inner circle. As one respondent to my recent study put it, “it was the sham crackdowns themselves that are most directly responsible for taking this from a relatively straightforward law enforcement challenge to something truly insidious and intractable.”

That is why this directive offers little cause for optimism. Instead, it provides further evidence of how adept the CPP has become at maximizing profit capture from its criminal economy while simultaneously manipulating concerned international observers.

Some might ask whether this time could be different. Could a genuine effort to dismantle the scam economy finally be underway?

Simply put: no. A serious crackdown would require the CPP to hold accountable the very figures who ensure its survival. The scam compounds are not enabled by “rogue elements,” garden-variety corruption, or mere governance gaps – they are operated and shielded by cabinet ministers, senators, governors, by the prime minister’s own advisors and, yes, his family. That underlying reality has not changed and will not until real costs are imposed on these actors.

Rather than applauding this theater, the international community should recognize it for what it is: a well-worn survival strategy of a regime that has failed for four decades to move beyond criminal industries as a means for funding its brutal grip on power. The CPP is running a de facto scam state. Its governing apparatus and its criminal industries are inseparable, and the cybercrime economy is no sideshow. It is the core business model.

If Washington and its partners are serious about protecting their citizens, defending trafficking victims, and restoring credibility to their diplomacy, they must stop treating Phnom Penh as a good-faith partner. Instead, they should meet this regime where it is most vulnerable: by imposing real costs on its scam-linked elites through targeted sanctions, asset seizures, regional cooperation to disrupt laundering networks, and public exposure campaigns.

Anything short of this merely props up the façade and ensures that the next “crackdown” – like this one – will be another carefully choreographed act, not a reckoning.

Jacob Sims