Amnesty says Cambodian police and army guarded scam compounds

According to Guardian News and Media, Amnesty International has published a report alleging that Cambodian police and military officers worked as private security guards inside compounds where thousands of people were forced to carry out online fraud.

The report, called Official Business: Security companies and authorities at scamming compounds in Cambodia, is based on 151 survivor interviews, visits to 82 scam compounds, and social media videos from dozens of guard accounts shown wearing company uniform. Amnesty says this work links the compounds to five well-connected private security companies, something survivors have described for years without independent verification.

What the investigation found

Survivors held in these compounds have long said members of the Cambodian military or police were present inside. Amnesty's secretary general, Agnès Callamard, said those accounts could not be independently verified until now. The new report names one company, Leap Somnang, as having the largest footprint, linked to at least 15 compounds across eight provinces. Twelve survivors identified its guards, uniforms or logo.

Amnesty alleges Leap Somnang is believed to be controlled by Ban Sophat, who publicly served as the company's chair while also holding rank as a colonel in the armed forces. The group says it has photos showing him alongside Leap Somnang guards at two compounds. Ban Sophat has denied holding any ownership, director or management role in the company, saying in a letter to Amnesty that he served only as an adviser to the owner, and that appearing in a photograph taken at a location does not mean he had knowledge of or involvement in what happened there.

Why naming the guards matters

The survivor accounts existed before this report. What changes is the evidence behind them. Interviews, site visits and uniformed social media footage turn a pattern survivors described into a documented link between named companies, a named commander, and specific compounds. That is what makes the claim that police and soldiers worked the exits of these compounds something that can now be checked against evidence, rather than taken on testimony alone.

Callamard said the guards controlled compound exits, hunted down people who escaped, and enforced compliance through fear and violence, and that without them the system could not have functioned. Cambodian authorities say they have shut down hundreds of scam centres. The UN says hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into south-east Asia and, in many cases, lured by false office job offers before being forced into schemes including romance fraud, where a fake relationship is built with a victim before their money is taken.

For a reader outside Cambodia, the significance is that the scam messages arriving on a phone, including romance approaches that build slowly over weeks, may originate from people held against their will inside a documented, named system of enforcement.