Shootout at Poipet Scam Compound

And Kok An hit with US sanctions

Happy Labor Day everyone!

First, we have to address the headline-sized elephant in the room: We had a typo in our headline last week. (Ironically, the same post in which we dissected a Wall Street Journal headline). We are sorry for the error and hope it didn’t take away from the content of the newsletter. Rest assured the bovine responsible will feature on a menu at your nearest Lucky Burger outlet.

Last week, hours before the aforementioned post, the United States dropped another tranche of sanctions — this time hitting Cambodian senator and casino magnate Kok An, plus various associates and companies. Kok An runs a chain of casinos under the Crown banner, utilities, security firms and import-export companies like any self-respecting Cambodian oknha.

But we’re shelving an analysis of that for now in favor of more pressing news: The active, hours-long firing that rattled the streets of Poipet on Wednesday, as the Cambodian government continues its crackdown on scam compounds across the country. To refresh, the government says it has raided more than 250 sites, shut down 91 casinos, charged more than 1,000 people — and that more than 250,000 people working in scams have left the country voluntarily, which would effectively be the entire workforce unless we are severely underestimating the size of the illicit sector.

First we’ll sum up what happened, and then we’ll give some visual analysis of the park.

Shots fired

The first indication that fire was exchanged on Wednesday appeared on a Cambodian Facebook news producer and was attributed to Thai military forces during their visit of border areas in Oddar Meanchey. Kouprey could not independently verify whether this happened as described; as we have pointed out before, the ASEAN observer team has never confirmed or denied reports like these (or in fact ever released a timely report about the border conflict). Thailand claims they were firecrackers.

Then, Telegram groups and local news pages started posting about firing at a scam compound known as Baolong 3, located just north of Phsar Kandal in Poipet and near/within a special economic zone (more on this later). Videos, shot in the daytime, appeared to show hundreds of mixed security personnel, many armed with assault weapons, surrounding the compound and videos of intense gunfire. Some of the videos documented people running out of the compound and forming groups in an effort to evade police forces. Others were arrested.

Government officials have stayed mum as of publication about all of this. But thanks to scam observers like CyberScamMonitor and Phnom Penh On the Ground — along with scores of Telegram posts the Herd sorted through — we can piece together a timeline.

Clips continued to emerge, both captured from the perspective of people outside the compound, inside the compound or living nearby. In all of them, the sound of gunfire is prominent. A few videos show a truck backed up into the wall of the compound, presumably to allow for people inside to escape. At this point, chaos abounded.

Eventually, this photo of mass detainments appeared on Telegram on Wednesday.

This would seem to be the end of it — until hours later on Wednesday evening, when a video emerged of a pitched gun battle in an open field, seemingly near the eastern boundary wall of the compound. Watch this.

About 12 hours later on Thursday morning, the National Police posted that a raid had unfolded at “Sanco Borey” and claimed that foreigners, mostly Chinese nationals, were arrested.

Aside from looking like an action-figure photoshoot for Deputy National Police Chief Hem Sovath (son-in-law of deputy prime minister and former police chief Neth Savoeun), the post said nothing of the sustained gunfire or if people were injured or killed in the gunfire. Other photos posted to Telegram show hundreds — seemingly up to 1,000 — people being detained and cuffed. Former Phnom Penh Police chief Chhuon Sovan, who is in charge of a scam taskforce for Banteay Meanchey and Oddar Meanchey, also appeared to be present in the province.

By Thursday afternoon, a local media video emerged showing people being taken from the Baolong 3 compound in a bus. The situation looks calm and we cannot hear any ongoing fighting.

So while it’s safe to assume the police have controlled the situation, we still have no clarity on what happened on Wednesday. Who were the police shooting at, or who was shooting at them? Have they arrested anyone accused of firing shots? How did the assailants get the guns, and why did this raid turn into a gunfight? What was different about this site?

As with most cyberscam-related incidents, we expect more clarity to emerge with time. But at the outset, this didn’t look good. Although the government framing is that police successfully shut down a notorious scam compound, the Herd wonders why a huge scam site was allowed to grow to the size of a mini-city and defend itself with assumedly illegal weapons against a 500-strong security force, keeping them at bay for hours. Why are scam compounds fighting with the same intensity as the Thai and Cambodian militaries?

Sanco doth protest much

Sanco Cambo Investment Group, which owns the Sanco Poipet Special Economic Zone, released a statement claiming it had no involvement in the scam operation at Baolong 3 and that the site was not part of their zone. Also it informs (read: warns) journalists to not associate the company with the scam raid and to not mistake Baolong 3 for being part of Sanco Poipet SEZ.

So let’s take a look at Sanco.

To start, the National Police release on the raid identifies the location as Sanco Borey. But we would not necessarily consider the police a trustworthy source to make a conclusion. The area goes by Chhour Vichet Sanco Park. Chhour Vichet is one of the two active directors of the Sanco Cambo Investment.

The website of Sanco Cambo Investment and Sanco Poipet SEZ is down, and their official Facebook page hasn’t been posting recently.

But Vichet is also the director of Sanco Residences, which is developing residential plots within the SEZ park. And the Facebook page for VC Sanco Property is actively posting about houses and villas in what is being called “Sanco Green Lake” — the undeveloped area located to the right in the map below that Sanco shared when issuing its denial of links to Baolong 3.

Sanco says the area within the green boundary is part of the SEZ project.

Photos posted to VC Sanco Property’s page are a typical mix of marketing and sales images, renditions of the planned housing development and layout designs:

Crammed in the right-hand bottom corner is an insert labeled “Master Plan Sanco SEZ”. If you zoom in, you can see that this outline includes an area southwest of the land outlined in green that Sanco Cambo Investment claims is the extent of their SEZ. (Refer Sanco’s map provided with their statement above).

This would strongly suggest that all the land in this master plan comes under Sanco Cambo Investment or Sanco Poipet SEZ or Sanco Residence — take your pick of a Chhour Vichet-owned company.

Now take a look at the image below:

Here, we can see the land to the southwest of the Sanco SEZ is shaded grey marked as a “development project”. This is the exact location of the Baolong 3 scam compound, again showing that it is well within the Sanco Park.

And finally, here’s the best image of the Chhuor Vichet Sanco Park:

It’s pretty clear based on all three of these images that the area housing Baolong 3 is within the boundaries of the park.

We obviously can’t read the minds of Chhuor Vichet and his partner, but they appear to be distancing the SEZ — which appears to have companies operating there, shown as the blue-roof buildings in the center of the map — from the rest of the development. We also found no records of Sanco selling a section of the park, leasing it or denying they own it before Thursday’s statement. The SEZ doth protest much.

Thanks to the intrepid investigators at CyberScamMonitor, who have published more detailed information about Baolong 3 and its siblings 2 and 4.

And now for the news:

— An Appeal Court upheld a 27-year prison sentence for former CNRP president Kem Sokha, and added a 5-year ban on travel overseas. Reminder: Sokha is serving his sentence under house arrest at his residence in Phnom Penh, is under court supervision and prevented from meeting anyone except close family and his lawyers.
— The U.S. sanctioned Cambodian Senator and casino magnate Kok An, including known scam-related individuals like Rithy Raksmey, Aik Paung and Sai Aung Linn. Also another bank and specialized bank come under the scam scanner.
— Unlike his predecessors, Kok An went on a media blitz where he owned up to owning a casino business (duh!) but said that he wasn’t linked to scam operations at his casino locations across the country.
— Kok An tells the Kiripost: “I am a senator, a position earned through the trust and votes of Cambodians…” In fact, citizens do not vote for senators; their representatives (lawmakers and commune councilors) vote in the Senate election.
— Apropos of nothing, Cambodia uses a party-list proportional representation system, where you vote for a party, not the actual candidate. So no one specifically voted for Kok An.
— A protest by Huione customers, who have been pushing the NBC and officials to release their money from the defunct and scam-linked payment service, turned violent and resulted in the arrest of two Cambodians, one of whom is described as a representative of the group.
— The NBC released this weird video expressing regret for the violence at the protest but said nothing about the arrested Cambodian Huione customers and largely wiped its hand off the issue, directing protestors to go to court.
— There were separate protests from garment workers in Poipet, garment workers in Phnom Penh and Grab drivers in the capital this week. Sounds like the discontent is increasing.
— Senate boss Hun Sen met with UNESCO’s Cambodia representative and, according to Hun Sen, they discussed everything but the eviction of thousands of people at Angkor park or ongoing attacks on press freedom in Cambodia.
— Days short of Press Freedom Day on May 3, a Ministry of Information survey found that 80.88% of respondents rated press freedom as excellent, with only 1.58% saying it was not good. We also got great insights into the sector: 13% percent of surveyed journalists were single and 3.5% were divorced. Thank you, Pheaktra.
— However, CamboJA’s report finds that 2 in 3 journalists felt uncomfortable reporting on issues like environmental degradation, while also highlighting issues around intimidation, lack of access, legal restrictions and threats, and limited resources.
— Redrawn protected boundary lines are making it hard for Indigenous communities to access their traditional lands in Ratanakiri province.
— The King is being discharged from hospital following surgery for prostate cancer.
— Read Mekong Independent’s news briefs for a round-up of recent news stories.