The United States authorities announced on Thursday they are sanctioning a Cambodian businessman named Ly Yong Phat – described as owner of the “O-Smach Resort” casino property in a northern part of Cambodia bordering Thailand – for “serious human rights abuse” related to alleged forced labour in online scam centres.
The business entities sanctioned included Mr Ly’s conglomerate L.Y.P. Group Co Ltd and O-Smach Resort, in Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province. That is according to a press release from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The OFAC also designates three other Cambodia locations: Garden City Hotel; Koh Kong Resort; and Phnom Penh Hotel, as being “owned or controlled” by Mr Ly.
Bradley T. Smith, Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, was quoted as saying the move “underscores our commitment to hold accountable those involved in human trafficking and other abuses, while also disrupting their ability to operate investment fraud scheme that targets countless unsuspecting individuals, including Americans”.
The release said O-Smach Resort had – from 2022 up this year, been investigated by “police” over reports of people being lured to the property in relation to “false employment opportunities”.
The Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association had reported in March – citing local officials – that police in Oddar Meanchey had “rescued” a number of people at that resort. The association also cited the officials as saying Mr Ly was the owner of O-Smach Resort.
The OFAC in its statement, said people that had allegedly been entrapped there, had their phones and passports confiscated upon arrival, and subsequently forced to work in scam operations.
“People who called for help reported being beaten, abused with electric shocks, made to pay a hefty ransom, or threatened with being sold to other online scam gangs. There have been two reports of victims jumping to their death from buildings within O-Smach Resort,” the OFAC release stated.
From October 2022 to March 2024, victims of various nationalities – including Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai and Vietnamese – have been freed as a result of several rescue actions conducted by local authorities at O-Smach Resort, the release said.
In its latest annual Trafficking in Persons Report, released in June this year, U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons highlighted issues of forced criminality in online scam compounds in Cambodia’s Ko Kong, Sihanoukville, O’Smach and other locations along the Cambodia-Thailand border.
The report had claimed “corruption” and “official complicity” – including by high-level senior government officials – in trafficking crimes remained “widespread and endemic”.
