Foreign News
The mysterious owner of a ‘scam empire’ accused of stealing $14bn in crypto
Just 37 years old, Chen Zhi is accused of being “the mastermind behind a sprawling cyber-fraud empire, a criminal enterprise built on human suffering”.
With his wispy goatee beard and baby-faced features, he looks even younger than he is. He has certainly become very wealthy, very quickly.
Last week the US Department of Justice charged him with running scam compounds in Cambodia that stole billions in cryptocurrency from victims all over the world. The US Treasury Department has confiscated more than $14bn (£10.5bn) worth of bitcoin that it says is linked to him – it said this was the largest ever crypto-currency seizure.
His own company, the Cambodian Prince Group, describes him on its website as “a respected entrepreneur and renowned philanthropist” whose “vision and leadership have transformed Prince Group into a leading business group in Cambodia that adheres to international standards”. The BBC has contacted the Prince Group for comment.
So, how much do we know about Chen Zhi, the mysterious figure allegedly running a scam empire?
Brought up in Fujian province in south-eastern China, he started with a small, and apparently not very successful internet gaming company, and moved to Cambodia in either late 2010 or 2011, where he began working in the then-booming real estate sector.
His arrival coincided with the start of a speculative property boom in Cambodia. It was fuelled by the availability of large tracts of land expropriated by powerful, politically-connected figures and by a flood of Chinese capital.
Some of it was pouring in on the tail end of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative to export Chinese-made infrastructure, and some of it was from individual Chinese investors seeking more affordable alternatives to China’s overheated property market. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Cambodia was also rising fast.
The skyline of the capital Phnom Penh changed dramatically. The characterful, low-rise cityscape of mustard-coloured French colonial mansions was transformed into another Asian high-rise forest of glass and steel towers.
The transformation of Sihanoukville, a once quiet little seaside resort, was even more extreme. It was not just Chinese holidaymakers and property speculators heading there, but also gamblers – gambling is illegal in China.
New casinos sprang up, alongside gaudy, luxury hotels and apartment blocks. There was plenty of money to be made.
Even so, Chen Zhi’s trajectory was startling.
In 2014 he became a Cambodian citizen, giving up his Chinese nationality. This enabled him to buy land in his own name, but required a minimum investment or donation to the government of $250,000.
It was never clear where Chen Zhi’s money came from. When applying for a bank account on the Isle of Man in 2019 he listed an unnamed uncle who he said had given him $2m to start his first property company in 2011, but no evidence for this was ever provided.
Chen Zhi founded the Prince Group in 2015, focused on property development, when he was still only 27 years old.
He got a commercial banking licence in 2018 to establish Prince Bank. The same year he obtained a Cypriot passport, in return for a minimum investment there of $2.5m, giving him easy access to the European Union. He later acquired Vanuatu citizenship as well.
He started Cambodia’s third airline, and in 2020 obtained a certificate to operate a fourth. There were luxury malls in Phnom Penh built by the Prince property arm, five-star hotels in Sihanoukville, and an ambitious scheme to construct a $16bn “eco-city” called “Bay of Lights” there.
In 2020 Chen Zhi was awarded the highest title bestowed by Cambodia’s king, that of “Neak Oknha”, which requires a donation of at least $500,000 to the government.
He had already been made an official adviser to Interior Minister Sar Kheng since 2017, was a business partner with his son Sar Sokha, and an official adviser to Cambodia’s most powerful man Hun Sen, and later his son Hun Manet after he succeeded his father as prime minister in 2023.
Chen Zhi was lauded in the local media as a philanthropist, who had funded scholarships for low-income students and donated substantially to help Cambodia deal with the Covid pandemic.
Yet he remained an enigmatic figure, staying out of the limelight, making few public statements.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s worked with him directly, been in the room with him, they all describe him as very courteous, very calm, very measured,” says Jack Adamovic Davies, a journalist who did a three year-long investigation of Chen Zhi which was published by Radio Free Asia last year.
“I think not being the kind of flamboyant person that people will write tabloid-y things about was smart. Even those who no longer want to be associated with him are still impressed by his quiet charisma, his gravitas.”
But where was all this wealth and power coming from?
In 2019 the property bubble burst in Sihanoukville. The online gambling business had attracted Chinese criminal syndicates, who then began violent turf wars with each other. Tourists were scared off.
Under pressure from China, then-prime minister Hun Sen banned online gambling in August that year. Around 450,000 Chinese left the city as its main business collapsed. Many of Prince Group’s residential blocks were left empty.
Yet Chen Zhi continued to expand his business interests and spend freely.
According to the UK authorities, in 2019 he bought a £12m mansion in north London and a £95m office block in the city’s financial district. The US says he and his associates bought properties in New York, private jets and superyachts, and a Picasso painting.
And, they allege, Chen Zhi’s wealth came from the most profitable business in Asia today, online fraud, and the human trafficking and money laundering that go with it.
The US and UK have imposed sanctions on 128 companies linked to Chen Zhi and Prince Group, and on 17 individuals from seven different nationalities who they allege helped run his scam empire. Assets linked to Chen Zhi in the US and UK have been frozen.
The sanctions announcement describes an elaborate web of shell companies and cryptocurrency wallets through which money was moved to conceal its origins.
It says: “Prince Group Transnational Crime Organisation profits from a litany of transnational crimes including sextortion – a type of fraud involving the solicitation for eventual blackmail of sexually explicit materials, often from minors – money laundering, various frauds and rackets, corruption, illegal online gambling, and the industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion of enslaved workers in furtherance of the operation of at least 10 scam compounds in Cambodia.”
China too had been quietly investigating the Prince Group since at least 2020. There have been a number of court cases accusing the company of running online fraud schemes.
The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has established a task force “to investigate the “Prince Group, a major transnational online gambling syndicate based in Cambodia”.
At its heart, the US and UK allege, were businesses like Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park, a compound built by the Prince Group in Chrey Thom, close to the Vietnamese border.
In the past the Prince Group has denied any involvement in scams, and said it no longer has any connection to Golden Fortune, but the US and UK investigation argues that there is still a clear business link between them.
Mr Adamovic Davies interviewed a number of people living and working near Golden Fortune for his investigation into Chen Zhi. They described brutal beatings of the mainly Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysians who tried to escape from the compound, where they were forced to run online scams.
“I think it’s the sheer scale of his operations which really makes Chen Zhi stand out,” he says, adding that it is shocking the Prince Group was able to build a “global footprint” without raising alarm bells given the serious criminal charges it now faces.
“What should be uncomfortable for a lot of people is that Chen Zhi should never have been able to acquire all these assets, in Singapore, London or the US. Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, bankers, all should have been looking at this group and saying, hang on, this doesn’t add up. And they didn’t.”
Today, after all the publicity generated by the US and UK sanctions, businesses are rushing to dissociate themselves from the Prince Group.
The Cambodian Central Bank has had to issue a statement to nervous depositors assuring them they will be able to withdraw their funds from Prince Bank. The South Korean authorities have frozen $64m of its deposits held by Korean banks.
The Singapore and Thai governments are promising investigations into Prince subsidiaries in their jurisdictions – of the 18 individuals targeted by the US and UK, three are Singaporeans.
Cambodia’s government has said little, apart from urging the US and UK authorities to be sure they have sufficient evidence for their allegations.
But it will be difficult for Cambodia’s ruling elite to distance themselves from Chen Zhi, after being so close to him for so long. Cambodia was already facing growing pressure over its tolerance of scam businesses, which some estimate may account for around half of the entire economy.
And what of Chen Zhi himself?
Nothing has been heard or seen of him since the sanctions were announced last week. The enigmatic tycoon, once among the most powerful figures in Cambodia, appears to have vanished.
(BBC)
A 24-year-old British man is among 19 people who were killed in a bus crash in Nepal, police say.
The bus – which had been carrying tourists – had been travelling to the capital, Kathmandu, when it lost control and fell 200m on to the bank of the Trishuli river, in the country’s central Dhading district, in the early hours of Monday morning.
There were 44 people onboard including the driver, 25 of whom suffered injuries. The bus had been travelling from Pokhara, a popular tourist spot.
Nepal’s Home Ministry has created a five-member taskforce to investigate the cause of the incident. The UK Foreign Office said it was assisting the family of the Briton who was killed.
Nepalese authorities identified him as Stewart Dominic Ethan. His name has not been confirmed by the Foreign Office.
Nepalese police say they have identified all 19 bodies, including a 40-year-old Chinese woman and a 32-year-old man from India. Among the injured is a Chinese national and a New Zealander.
All the injured had been taken to hospitals in the capital, they added. Children were among those onboard.
Multiple teams were sent to the site, including police units, the army and a rescue team of divers, authorities said.
Police spokesman Abinarayan Kafle said 17 people died at the scene, with two more dying while receiving treatment, BBC Nepali reported.
Road accidents are relatively commonplace in Nepal, due to a range of factors including poor road maintenance and narrow paths in mountainous areas.
In 2024, at least 14 people died after a bus travelling from Pokhara to Kathmandu fell into the Marsyangdi river in the Tanahun district.
“We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in Nepal and are in contact with the local authorities,” a Foreign Office spokesman told the BBC.
Nepal is a popular destination for many international visitors, especially climbers, who travel there to access a key section of the Himalaya mountain range that includes Mount Everest.
Home to eight of the world’s tallest peaks, mountaineering is a significant source of revenue for the country – in 2024 climbing fees brought in $5.9m.
[BBC]
Mexico’s most wanted man and the leader of the feared Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) drug cartel has been killed during a security operation to arrest him, the defence ministry has said.
Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”, died on Sunday as he was being taken to the capital Mexico City, after being seriously injured in clashes between his supporters and the army.
Four CJNG members were killed in the town of Tapalpa, the central-western Jalisco state. Three army personnel were also injured. The US had given Mexico with information that assisted the operation.
CJNG retaliated by setting cars alight, building roadblocks and attacking security forces in eight states.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo later urged people to remain “calm”.
In a post on X, she wrote that “in most parts of the country, activities are proceeding normally”.
The CJNG cartel – which had its original power base in Jalisco – is now present across Mexico.
El Mencho, a 59-year-old former police officer, ran a vast criminal organisation responsible for trafficking huge quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the US.
It had offered a $15m (£11.1m) reward for information leading to El Mencho’s capture.
In a statement, the Mexican defence ministry said the operation was “planned and executed” by the country’s special forces.
Aircraft from the Mexican Air Force and the National Guard were also deployed.
It also said that several armoured vehicles and weapons – including rocket launchers – were seized during the operation.
The US had been providing information to Mexico that assisted its operation, the statement said.
Eyewitnesses have filmed plumes of smoke rising over several cities including Guadalajara – one of the host cities of the forthcoming Fifa World Cup.
In the tourist hotspot of Puerto Vallarta, on the Jalisco coast, potentially thousands of tourists are trapped in the resort around the fighting.
Throughout Sunday, there were reports of gunmen on the streets in Jalisco and elsewhere.
The governor of Jalisco, Pablo Lemus Navarro, on social media advised residents of the state to adhere to a code red warning and avoid leaving their homes.
He also said that public transport was suspended in the state.
The US Department of State issued a shelter-in-place warning for US citizens in the states of Jalisco, Tamaulipas, as well as some areas in Michoacan, Guerrero and Nuevo Leon.
Former US ambassador to Mexico and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau described El Mencho on social media as “one of the bloodiest and most ruthless drug kingpins.”
He added that El Mencho’s death was “a great development for Mexico, the US, Latin America, and the world”.
The killing of El Mencho represents a victory for the Mexican president in her fight against the country’s drug cartels.
It also could strengthen her relationship with US President Trump, who often has demanded more progress on security in Mexico.
However, if the security forces can’t bring the situation under control quickly, the Mexican administration’s victory may be overshadowed by the cartel’s violent response.
The Jalisco cartel has gained notoriety since it was formed in about 2010 for a series of attacks on security forces and public officials.
It has downed an army helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, killed dozens of state officials, and has even been known to hang the bodies of its victims from bridges to intimidate its rivals.
[BBC]
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to send out a firm message of defiance.
When we met this weekend in the government headquarters in Kyiv, he said that far from losing, Ukraine would end the war victorious. He was firmly against paying the price for a ceasefire deal demanded by President Vladimir Putin, which is withdrawing from strategic ground that Russia has failed to capture despite sacrificing tens of thousands of soldiers.
Putin, Zelensky said, has already started World War Three, and the only answer was intense military and economic pressure to force him to step back.
“I believe that Putin has already started it. The question is how much territory he will be able to seize and how to stop him… Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves.”
What about Russia’s demand for Ukraine to hand over the 20% of the eastern region of Donetsk that it still holds – a line of towns Ukraine calls “fortress cities” – as well as more land in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia? Isn’t that, I asked, a reasonable request if it produces a ceasefire?
“I see this differently. I don’t look at it simply as land. I see it as abandonment – weakening our positions, abandoning hundreds of thousands of our people who live there. That is how I see it. And I am sure that this ‘withdrawal’ would divide our society.”
But isn’t it a good price to pay if that satisfies President Putin? Do you think it would satisfy him?
“It would probably satisfy him for a while… he needs a pause… but once he recovers, our European partners say it could take three to five years. In my opinion, he could recover in no more than a couple of years. Where would he go next? We do not know, but that he would want to continue the war is a fact.”
I met Volodymyr Zelensky in a conference room inside the heavily-guarded government enclave in a well-to-do corner of central Kyiv. In the interview he spoke mostly in Ukrainian.
You get a sense of the weight of leadership carried by Zelensky from the diligence of his security guards.
Visiting any head of state requires rigorous checks. But entering the presidential buildings in Kyiv takes the process to a level I have rarely experienced before.
It is not surprising in a country at war, with a president who has already been targeted by Russia.
Despite all that, the man who started as an entertainer, who won the Ukrainian version of Strictly Come Dancing in 2006, and played the role of an unexpected president of Ukraine in a TV comedy, before becoming the real-life president of Ukraine, seems to be remarkably resilient.
US President Donald Trump said on the eve of the most recent ceasefire talks in Geneva that “Ukraine better come to the table fast”.
He continues to default to putting more pressure on Ukraine than on Russia.
Western diplomats have indicated since last summer that Trump agrees with Putin that territorial concessions from Ukraine to Russia are the key to the ceasefire Trump wants, ideally before this coming summer.
Plenty of analysts outside the White House also judge that Ukraine cannot win the war and, without making concessions to Moscow, will lose it.
I asked Zelensky whether Trump and the others had a point.
“Where are you now?” Zelensky asked in return. “Today you are in Kyiv, you are in the capital of our homeland, you are in Ukraine. I am very grateful for this. Will we lose? Of course not, because we are fighting for Ukraine’s independence.”
Zelensky has often said that Ukraine can win, but what would victory look like?
Of course, he said, victory meant restoring normal lives for Ukrainians and ending the killing. But the wider view of victory he presented was all about a global threat that he says comes from Putin.
“I believe that stopping Putin today and preventing him from occupying Ukraine is a victory for the whole world. Because Putin will not stop at Ukraine.”
You are not saying that victory is getting all the land back, are you?
“We’ll do it. That is absolutely clear. It is only a matter of time. To do it today would mean losing a huge number of people – millions of people – because the [Russian] army is large, and we understand the cost of such steps. You would not have enough people, you would be losing them. And what is land without people? Honestly, nothing.”
“And we also don’t have enough weapons. That depends not just on us, but on our partners. So as of now that’s not possible but returning to the just borders of 1991 [the year Ukraine declared its independence, precipitating the final collapse of the Soviet Union] without a doubt, is not only a victory, it’s justice. Ukraine’s victory is the preservation of our independence, and a victory of justice for the whole world is the return of all our lands.”
A year ago, Zelensky visited the White House and received a reception one senior Western diplomat described to me as a pre-planned public “diplomatic mugging” from Donald Trump and his Vice-President, JD Vance.
Their argument, in the presence of the world’s media, was watched by millions around the world.
Trump, just inaugurated as president for the second time, was sending the strongest possible signal that the era of support Zelensky and Ukraine had relied on from President Joe Biden was over. Nato members were already on notice from the new administration. Vance had just got back from shattering Western European illusions about the strength of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Since then, reportedly coached by Britain’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell among others, Zelensky has avoided public confrontations with Trump.
The US president has stopped almost all shipments of military aid to Ukraine. But the US still provides vital intelligence, and European countries are spending billions buying weapons from the Americans to give to Ukraine.
I asked Ukraine’s president about Trump’s often contradictory statements, recalling that among the untruths he has uttered is the accusation that Zelensky is a dictator who started the war – a precise echo of claims made by Vladimir Putin.
Zelensky laughed.
“I am not a dictator, and I didn’t start the war, that’s it.”
But can you trust President Trump? If you extract a security guarantee from him, I asked, would he keep his word? He is after all a man who changes his mind.
“It is not only President Trump, we’re talking about America. We are all presidents for the appropriate terms. We want guarantees for 30 years for example. Political elites will change, leaders will change.”
He meant that US security guarantees needed approval from Congress in Washington DC to make them watertight.
“They will be voted on in Congress for a reason. It’s not just presidents. Congress is needed. Because the presidents change, but institutions stay.”
In other words, Donald Trump might be unreliable, but he will not be there for ever.
Zelensky says those security guarantees would have to be in place before he could consider another American demand – the US demand for Ukraine to hold a general election by the summer, echoing another Russian talking point that Zelensky is an illegitimate president. Trump has not demanded elections in Russia, where Putin became leader for the first time on the last day of the 20th Century.
Zelensky said he had not decided whether to stand again, whenever an election is held: “I might run and might not.”
Elections were due in 2024, but they could not be held under martial law that was introduced after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Holding postponed elections, Zelensky said, was technically possible if they had time to change the law to allow them to happen. But he needed security guarantees for Ukraine first.
He went on to raise so many potential problems about holding an election with millions of Ukrainians abroad as refugees and significant tracts of the country occupied by Russia that I suggested that in reality he was against the idea.
“If this is a condition for ending the war, let’s do it. I said, ‘honestly, you constantly raise the issue of elections’. I told the partners, ‘you need to decide one thing: you want to get rid of me or you want to hold elections? If you want to hold elections, (even if you are not ready to tell me honestly even now), then hold these elections honestly. Hold them in a way that the Ukrainian people will recognise, first of all. And you yourself must recognise that these are legitimate elections'”.
Volodymyr Zelensky has opponents and harsh critics here in Ukraine.
His government was rocked last autumn by a corruption scandal that led to the departure of his closest adviser.
But Zelensky, with a new team, still commands approval ratings that most leaders in Western Europe can only dream about.
He has irritated his allies at times with constant demands for more and better equipment. One of the accusations directed at him in the Oval Office by Trump and Vance a year ago was that he was not sufficiently grateful.
The latest item on his list is permission to manufacture American weapons under licence, including Patriot air defence missiles.
“Today the issue is air defence. This is the most difficult problem. Unfortunately, our partners still do not grant licenses for us to produce systems ourselves, for example, Patriot systems, or even missiles for the systems we already have. So far, we have not achieved success in this.”
Why won’t they do that?
“I don’t know. I have no answer.”
At the end of the interview, he switched from Ukrainian to English.
Given everything he had said, I asked him whether we needed to get ready for an even longer war in Ukraine.
“No, no, no, it’s two parallel tracks… you are playing chess with a lot of leaders, not with Russia. There is not one right way. You have to choose a lot of parallel steps, parallel directions. And one of these parallel ways will, I think, bring success. For us, success is to stop Putin.”
But Vladimir Putin isn’t going to end this war, is he? Unless he’s under massive pressure and he doesn’t seem to be.
“Yes and no. We will see. Yes and no. He doesn’t want, but doesn’t want doesn’t mean he will not. God bless. God bless, we will be successful. Thank you.”
And with that, he posed for photographs, shook hands with the BBC team, and strode out of the room.
[BBC]
Can West Indies make up for bowling gulf in virtual quarter-final against India?
Flights cancelled as travel warnings issued after strikes on Iran
Trump says Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead after US-Israeli strikes
South Africa put spotless record on the line in all-African clash
Fair weather will prevail over most parts of the island
Renewed Lanka’s Easter Bombing probe puts NTJ’s South India radicalisation network back under lens
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
Sunday Island 27 December – Headlines
#SundayIsland 17th December – Headlines
Sunday Island – 28th March
Sunday Island Headlines – 21 March
Sunday Island – 21st February – Headlines
-
Features6 days agoLOVEABLE BUT LETHAL: When four-legged stars remind us of a silent killer
-
Business6 days agoBathiya & Santhush make a strategic bet on Colombo
-
Business6 days agoSeeing is believing – the silent scale behind SriLankan’s ground operation
-
Features6 days agoProtection of Occupants Bill: Good, Bad and Ugly
-
News6 days agoPrime Minister Attends the 40th Anniversary of the Sri Lanka Nippon Educational and Cultural Centre
-
Business6 days agoHuawei unveils Top 10 Smart PV & ESS Trends for 2026
-
News6 days agoCoal ash surge at N’cholai power plant raises fresh environmental concerns
-
Opinion2 days agoJamming and re-setting the world: What is the role of Donald Trump?