Amnesty International says licensed Cambodian casinos remain tied to trafficking and torture

A new Amnesty International report says Cambodian authorities continued to approve casino projects in late 2025 and early 2026, even though licensed gambling properties remain tied to online scam compounds where torture, trafficking, forced labour, and other abuses have been documented.

The organization said its investigation found a direct overlap between formally recognized casino sites and places where victims said they were imprisoned and abused.

Using official maps from Cambodia’s Commercial Gambling Management Commission, satellite imagery, and survivor testimony, Amnesty said it identified at least eleven cases in which scam operations were located inside facilities officially recognized as licensed casinos, restaurants, residential buildings, or office buildings.

The report comes as Cambodia has publicly pledged to crack down on online scam centres. Amnesty said the situation on the ground contradicts those claims, with the latest licences issued between December 2025 and January 2026, while the government was at the same time pursuing a nationwide campaign against such operations.

Witnesses interviewed between 2024 and 2026 described what Amnesty characterized as an organized cross-border system. Victims from several countries said they were lured to Cambodia through false job offers and then confined inside compounds controlled by criminal groups.

According to the report, these networks were often linked to Chinese nationals or dual nationals and had close ties to Cambodia’s ruling elite.

Several of the properties named in the report are part of the Crown casino chain owned by Anco Brothers. Amnesty also named the Majestic Hotel & Casino in Sihanoukville, whose owner was indicted in January this year on charges including illegal recruitment for the purpose of exploitation, aggravated fraud, organised crime, and money laundering. Other sites cited in the report included Golden Sea Casino, Peak Casino, and Marinan International.

One woman told Amnesty she was held for months inside a casino-linked compound in Poipet near the Thai border. “The guards would enter the room and trigger the shock batons … it made a terrible sound. The children in the room were crying.” She also said she was forced to open a bank account that was likely used to launder money.

Amnesty said at least a dozen facilities remain linked to torture, forced labour, and human trafficking. Survivors who were asked to identify the buildings where they had been detained said much of the violence took place inside compounds that also housed casinos.

“This research establishes a clear link between Cambodia’s licensed casinos and its scamming compounds,” Amnesty International Co-Regional Director Montse Ferrer said.

The rights group said the exploitation had taken on an “industrialized” form and called for investigations and accountability across the full economic chain.

Ferrer said authorities needed to explain why casinos with documented links to trafficking and torture were still receiving official approval, warning that as long as those licences remained in place, people on casino property remained at risk of enslavement.

The report builds on Amnesty’s earlier findings. In June 2025, the organization said it had documented more than 50 scam centres in Cambodia, many of them linked to casinos. Last year, it also accused the Cambodian government of complicity with certain criminal groups.

Amnesty said it contacted both Cambodian authorities and the companies named in the report, but had not received any response by the time of publication.