Amid mounting international pressure to clean up its financial system, Cambodia’s central bank published a statement earlier this month accusing unnamed actors of waging a campaign of “economic sabotage” against the country.
“Rumors and unverified information have been circulating on social media, claiming that a number of banking and financial institutions are facing issues or heading toward collapse in the near future,” the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) said.
The NBC did not clarify who might be behind such a campaign, or which institutions were targeted. But the regulator warned that such “baseless” information could undermine “trust in the overall banking system.”
The banking system has taken a beating recently, as international attention turned to Cambodia’s role as a major hub for cyber-scams targeting victims around the world. Proceeds from scams have allegedly flooded into financial institutions.
The government has lurched into damage control, forming an “Ad-Hoc Commission for Combating Online Scams” which recently stated that a year of law enforcement actions had achieved “the complete eradication of large-scale online scam operations.” The NBC has shut down half a dozen banks since last year.
But the blows just keep coming.
In its annual review of Cambodia, published last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) flagged “persistent scam activities” as a threat to economic growth.
“The authorities need to urgently identify and address potential links between criminal activity and banks and close significant gaps in the licensing frameworks,” the IMF said, using uncharacteristically strong language.
The U.S. Treasury Department has also flagged such links, slapping sanctions over the past year on Cambodian financial institutions it alleged were laundering money from cyber-scams. Five of those sanctioned institutions were among the six closed down by the NBC.
But at least two other major lenders continue to operate, despite having been owned by well-known Cambodian businessmen accused of links to cyber-fraud operations.
‘Limited Reform’
Kok An is a Cambodian senator and tycoon whose business interests have included casinos and resorts, as well as Anco Specialized Bank Ltd. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Kok An in April, alleging that his properties housed “scam centers whose occupants have stolen money from Americans.”
Kok An owned 70 percent of the shares of Anco Specialized Bank, according to the financial institution's 2021 annual report. Reporters were unable to obtain more recent documentation showing current ownership of the bank, which is named after him.
Anco Specialized Bank operates today, and official records show that it holds an active license from the NBC. An Anco representative hung up the phone after being asked about the bank's operations post-sanctions.
Reporters were unable to reach Kok An through phone numbers listed for him in corporate records. Speaking to RFI’s Khmer-language service following the U.S. sanctions, Kok An reportedly rejected the allegations and said he did “not know about scamming.”
Another institution under scrutiny was previously called B.I.C (Cambodia) Bank Plc, but rebranded last year as iBank (Cambodia) Plc. It was acquired in 2020 by Cambodian tycoon Yim Leak, who is facing allegations of money laundering in neighboring Thailand.
Thailand’s Anti-Money Laundering Office earlier this year froze about $590 million in assets linked to Yim Leak and an associate as part of an ongoing investigation. The country’s Securities and Exchange Commission separately filed criminal complaints against Yim Leak in June and August, accusing him of failing to disclose a share acquisition and a sale within the required deadline.
Neither Yim Leak nor iBank responded to requests for comment.
The NBC did not respond to questions about U.S. sanctions, the IMF allegations of potential links between Cambodian banks and criminal groups, and the roles of Kok An and Yim Leak in the financial sector.
Yim Leak has hired Seiden Law, a U.S. firm that said he and his family “are the apparent victims of guilt by association and political persecution.” The firm said in a June statement that Yim Leak had also been falsely identified to the U.S. Congress “as being associated with scam centers in Asia."
Separately, the U.K. Treasury named B.I.C. Bank as a subsidiary to a Cambodian company sanctioned for alleged involvement in cyber-scams and human trafficking.
“Mr. Yim has never been convicted of a crime in any country and is repulsed by illegal cyber-crime centers in Asia. Mr. Yim is also not sanctioned,” Seiden Law stated.
Cambodia’s business registry shows that Yim Leak remains chairman of iBank. Since the rebrand, branches carry iBank signage and the commercial license has been transferred to that name. But the institution’s SWIFT code remains unchanged.
The ongoing presence in the financial system of banks that have been backed by people facing arrest warrants or international sanctions highlights the limits of Cambodia’s clean up efforts, said George McLeod, a partner at the security and intelligence advisory firm Critical Risk Team.
“The United States and other countries continue to pressure Cambodia to strengthen oversight of its banking sector, but meaningful reform has been limited,” he said.
‘Criminal Links’
While the NBC has not moved against iBank and Anco Specialized Bank, six other Cambodian institutions have been shuttered amid accusations of dirty money in the financial system.
In August, the NBC pulled the licenses and ordered the liquidation of CCU Commercial Bank Plc., HH Bank (Cambodia) Plc. and Heng Feng (Cambodia) Bank Plc.
The U.S. had sanctioned HH Bank in September 2025. The Treasury Department added Heng Feng to its sanctions list in April this year, and CCU Commercial Bank in June.
The Treasury Department cited alleged links to cyber-scams for each of the banks it sanctioned. However, the NBC did not mention such links when announcing the banks would be delicensed and liquidated. The central bank said only that the “decision is based on non-compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”
Earlier this year, the NBC revoked the license for Panda Bank, saying its “financial condition” had “continuously deteriorated, leading to an inability to provide normal banking services.”
Panda Bank had not been sanctioned, but the U.S. did target two other institutions that the NBC shut down last year: Prince Bank Plc. and Huione Pay.
Both institutions were targeted as part of sweeping sanctions related to the Prince Group, a Cambodian conglomerate that the U.S. alleged ran “industrial scale cyberfraud operations” out of “compounds reliant on human trafficking and modern-day slavery.”
The Prince Group has adamantly denied allegations of any illegal activity. A spokesperson previously told OCCRP that the conglomerate was “not a criminal syndicate but a collection of legitimate businesses serving millions of people and employing tens of thousands of people across the globe.”
The U.S. accused the conglomerate’s companies, including Prince Bank, of laundering the proceeds of scams. Prince Group companies mixed “illicit revenues with the legitimate Cambodian economy,” the U.S. Treasury Department alleged.
While the Huione Group was sanctioned alongside "146 targets within the Prince Group," the Treasury Department did not allege that it was part of the Cambodian conglomerate. Huione Pay, also known as H-Pay, was part of the Huione Group, which the U.S, alleged had laundered the proceeds of “virtual currency investment scams.”
The NCB stated it had ordered the liquidation of Huione Pay after having “observed transactions involving the purchase, sale, or payment using crypto assets,” which violated Cambodian regulations. The NBC did not provide a specific reason for its decision to liquidate Prince Bank.
Rath Sophoan, chairman of the Association of Banks in Cambodia — which includes all licensed lenders in the country, but not crypto institutions like Huione Pay — argued that accusations against a handful of institutions should not be overstated.
He noted that the four lenders on the U.S. sanctions list accounted for less than 1 percent of the roughly $100 billion in assets held across the country's 59 commercial banks as of December.
“Allegations involving individual institutions should not be generalized to Cambodia’s wider banking sector, which remains broad, diverse, and subject to licensing and supervision by the National Bank of Cambodia,” Rath Sophoan said.
In its statement earlier this month, the NBC attempted to counter what it said was “the dissemination and intentional fabrication of false information aimed at causing economic sabotage.”
But the IMF and others are urging the NBC to do more to build trust in the financial sector.
“An immediate priority is for the NBC, with support of other regulators, to identify banks with potential links to criminal activity and take action to address them,” the IMF said in its review last month.
Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center and a leading expert on transnational crime in Southeast Asia, was even more direct in comments to OCCRP.
“The National Bank of Cambodia can complain about unfair reputational damage, but the most effective way to defend the reputation of the sector would be to show that regulations and enforcement standards are being applied seriously,” he said. “That simply hasn’t occurred.”
