China confirms extradition of accused scam boss Chen Zhi from Cambodia
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Prince Bank was founded by accused scam boss Chen Zhi, who has been indicted by the United States and extradited to China.
PHOTO: AFP
PHNOM PENH - Accused scam boss Chen Zhi has been extradited to China from Cambodia, Beijing confirmed on Jan 8, after he was indicted by the United States over alleged multibillion-dollar fraud.
Video released by China’s Ministry of Public Security on Jan 8 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 Jan 8 that Prince Bank, founded by Chen, had been placed under 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 organisations”.
China’s Ministry of Public Security said Chen had been “escorted” 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 South-east Asian country’s central bank, said Prince Bank “has been placed under liquidation” and “suspended from providing new banking services, including accepting deposits and providing credit”. It said in a statement that 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 fulfil their obligations”, the NBC said.
‘Building pressure’
China-born Chen was sanctioned by Washington and London in October for directing alleged cyber frauds run by hundreds of workers trafficked into compounds in Cambodia.
Cambodia said it arrested Chen and two other Chinese nationals and extradited them
Chinese courts have sentenced people to death over involvement in scams, including more than a dozen people in 2025 for their involvement in criminal groups with operations in Myanmar’s Kokang border region.
The US Justice Department declined to comment on the operation.
Mr Jacob Daniel Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Centre, 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 harbour and abet a now famous criminal actor,” Mr Sims said. A change in status quo could happen only if international pressure on the nation’s “scam-invested oligarchs” was sustained, he said.
Cambodian officials deny allegations of government involvement and say the authorities are cracking down.
But Amnesty International said in 2025 that rights abuses in scam hubs were happening on a “mass scale”, and the government’s poor response suggested its complicity.
Chen faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted in the US on wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges involving approximately 127,271 Bitcoins seized by the US, worth more than US$11 billion (S$14.12 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.
Former adviser
US prosecutors in October unsealed an indictment accusing 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
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.
Since 2015, Prince Group has operated across more than 30 countries under the guise of legitimate real estate, financial services and consumer businesses, US prosecutors have said.
Chen and top executives allegedly used political influence and bribed officials in multiple countries to shield illicit operations.
In Cambodia, Chen served as an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, former leader Hun Sen.
His Cambodian nationality was revoked in December, the interior ministry said. AFP
