Southeast Asian countries and China have agreed to work with the UN crime-fighting agency to combat the rising regional threat from casino-related crime, money laundering and cybercrime.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced the plan of action with officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China in Bangkok on Tuesday.
The plan will strengthen prevention measures and improve capacity to investigate international organized crime and human trafficking across the whole region.
Casino and scam operations run by transnational organized crime groups are a growing menace in Southeast Asia.
Major organized crime groups linked to Chinese criminals have established extensive criminal operations in Myanmar border regions, as well as in Cambodia, Laos, and other countries.
UNODC said crime groups have taken advantage of casino and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) infrastructure and unemployment to set up sophisticated online scams that defraud people around the world, while utilizing trafficked victims to perform various criminal acts.
People-trafficking connected to casinos and scams run by organized crime has mushroomed across Southeast Asia, particularly in the Mekong region, said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative to Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“There is an urgent need for regional cooperation to address these increasingly integrated and interlinked crimes in the region, as well as the ecosystem they exist in,” Douglas said.
Human trafficking to recruit victims into criminal activity is just one aspect of transnational organised crime, according to a policy report issued by UNODC.
It is often connected to the operations of border casinos, large-scale money laundering, cybercrimes, and a range of other criminal offenses. There have also been multiple credible reports of torture and extortion in these operations over the past year, the report notes.
Thousands of people from across Asia and around the globe are being trafficked to work in Southeast Asian casinos and other scam compounds, lured by the prospect of lucrative employment opportunities, it adds.
Myanmar’s border areas with Thailand and China have seen a rise in cyber-scam operations and related criminal activities since the coup in 2021. Chinese criminal gangs operate casinos under the protection of some ethnic armed groups on the Thai border.
China’s government this year pressured Myanmar’s junta to take action against cyber scams, which the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs says have “seriously harmed Chinese interests.
In response, the regime handed over 24 people arrested for involvement in online scams to Chinese authorities in August.
However, the syndicates along the Thai border remain intact as they are protected by regime-friendly ethnic Border Guard Force groups.
