Police raid Chinese extortion racket

Taiwanese and Chinese nationals accused of running an international extortion ring were arrested over the weekend in the capital. Photograph: supplied

Monday, 21 May 2012
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
The Phnom Penh Post

Another massive crackdown on Taiwanese and Chinese nationals accused of operating a Phnom Penh-based international extortion ring – the third in less than a year – yielded 49 arrests over the weekend, police said yesterday.

Lieutenant General Chhay Sinarith, director of the Internal Security Department at the Ministry of Interior, said the suspects, who were identified to Cambodian authorities by Chinese police, were arrested by his forces in raids on eight different sites in the Chamkarmorn, Tuol Kork and Sen Sok districts of Phnom Penh.

“This was the third time our Cambodian police have cracked down and arrested these Chinese mafia groups in Cambodia,” Chhay Sinarith told the Post. “They were using VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol, a type of internet phone service] from Cambodia to threaten and extort money from many people in China and Taiwan.”

Authorities arrested nearly 200 suspected mafia members using the same methods of extortion last June, and arrested 60 others earlier this year.

Cambodia arrests 166 Chinese for extortion

Thursday, June 9th, 2011
Agence France-Presse

PHNOM PENH—Cambodian police on Thursday arrested 166 Chinese nationals for allegedly extorting money from victims abroad using Internet phone services, an official said.

A Vietnamese woman was also held in a massive police operation, national police spokesman Kirt Chantharith told Agence France-Presse, with arrests in the capital Phnom Penh, the southern town of Sihanoukville and the eastern province of Svay Rieng.

“They used the Internet to extort money from people overseas,” said Chantharith, adding that the extortion gang had “many tricks” to blackmail their targets, without providing further details.

He said the crackdown followed complaints from numerous victims.

S Korean, Chinese tourists most frequent in Siem Reap of Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Most of the foreign tourists coming to Siem Reap, where the renowned Angkor Wat is situated, were from South Korea and China in October, Chinese-language newspaper the Commercial News reported on Saturday.

The percentage is unclear, but they just shared the majority, the paper quoted a report from the provincial tourism authority assaying.

Meanwhile, altogether 170,180 people visited Siem Reap in October, it said.

Among them, 86,833 were foreigners, a 22.15 percent increase over the same period last year, and 83,347 Cambodians, a rise of 50.93 percent, it said.

From October to March next year is usually the peak period of tourism for the province, said the report.

In Siem Rep, there are currently 100 hotels with more than 7,000 rooms, some 200 taverns, around 200 restaurants, 128 travel agencies and nearly 3,000 travel guides, according to the report.

Tourism is one of the kingdom's pillar industries. The sector aims to draw 2 million foreign tourists this year, over 1.7 million in 2006.