Chinese and Cambodian police have deported 240 Chinese nationals involved in gambling fraud and other illegal activities back to China on a chartered flight.
This marks a new group of deportees, with more than 500 individuals expected to be returned in subsequent batches. The chartered flight arrived early Thursday morning (November 28th) at Taiyuan Wusu International Airport in Shanxi Province.
This was the second chartered flight operation this year. The first joint deportation took place in April, when China and Cambodia worked together to return over 680 Chinese nationals involved in gambling and fraud crimes in several waves.
According to China’s Ministry of Public Security, Cambodian authorities recently dismantled a major gambling and fraud operation in Phnom Penh, arresting hundreds of suspects from multiple countries, including more than 500 Chinese nationals. The Ministry emphasized the importance of the case and instructed the Shanxi Provincial Public Security Department to fully support the operation and ongoing investigations.
This deportation is part of China’s broader efforts to combat cross-border online gambling and telecom fraud. The country has been collaborating with neighbors such as Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines to apprehend Chinese suspects and return them to China.
The latest operation follows the dismantling of large telecom fraud centers in northern Myanmar just a week earlier, where more than 53,000 Chinese nationals were arrested as part of an ongoing campaign that began last year to tackle such crimes.
In September, China and Cambodia further strengthened their cooperation in the fight against gambling and fraud, signing agreements to enhance law enforcement collaboration and target Chinese organized crime in Cambodia.
In 2019, Cambodia imposed a ban on online gambling, particularly targeting Chinese-run operations that had proliferated in Sihanoukville, a coastal city in the south.
The public security authorities will continue to strengthen law enforcement cooperation with relevant countries and regions, focusing on targeted crackdowns, dismantling gambling and fraud rings involving Chinese nationals, and addressing the high incidence of such crimes, as reported by CCTV.
In addition to these efforts, China claims that its specialized operation, called ‘Fox Hunt’ – a covert global initiative launched a decade ago to combat corruption and economic crimes – has helped repatriate thousands of suspects and recover billions of dollars in assets.
