China announced this Thursday the extradition from Cambodia of Chen Zhi, alleged boss of one of the largest criminal networks in Asia. The tycoon, of Chinese nationality, had also been accused in October by the United States of money laundering. Chen, 38, is founder and chairman of Prince Group, a Cambodia-based multinational business conglomerate, which allegedly acted as a front for cryptocurrency investment scams through which he stole billions of euros from victims around the world.
His empire was built, according to research, thanks to a cruel system of forced labor centers spread across Cambodia. In them, they were forced to contact social network users from all over the planet in order to convince them to make non-existent investments in bitcoins and similar products.
with a huge presence in Cambodia and Myanmar, they have been in the crosshairs of the Chinese authorities in recent months. For Beijing, not only the million-dollar sums swindled were worrying, but also the thousands of citizens lured by deception to forced labor centers, where they were kidnapped and forced to get into the gears of the electronic scam to buy their freedom.
In these centers, where they suffer beatings and extortion, they are forced to open dozens of fake profiles on social networks that they use to contact unsuspecting users from all over the world, establish a relationship of trust and try to scam them. The UN Human Rights office estimated in 2023 that there could be up to 120,000 people detained in Myanmar alone, and another 100,000 in Cambodia. They are those people behind the typical messages that sometimes arrive on WhatsApp or Instagram: “Hello”; “Hi”; “Hello.”
Chen’s repatriation was successfully carried out on Wednesday from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, after the dispatch of a work team from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Preliminary investigations indicate that the criminal group is involved in the opening of illegal casinos, fraud, illicit commercial operations, concealment and concealment of profits from criminal activities, among other crimes, according to the Chinese state channel CCTV.
Authorities in Beijing have assured that, in the coming days, they will make public the first search and capture list of other key members of the gang, and have committed to bringing all fugitives to justice. It has also sent a message to those involved in criminal activities: to “recognize the situation, rectify it in time and surrender immediately, in order to obtain more lenient treatment in accordance with the law,” adds CCTV. For their part, the Cambodian authorities announced this Thursday the liquidation of the Prince Bank banking entity, owned by the tycoon, reports EFE.
Chen Zhi was born in Lianjiang County, China’s Fujian Province, according to a report owned by the China News Service. On the website of DW Capital Group, a Singapore-registered fund management company in which he made personal investments, Chen is described as “a young business prodigy.” His first entrepreneurial initiative was investing in a small Internet cafe in Fujian. In 2011, he began his foray into the Cambodian real estate market, entering what he himself described as “uncharted waters.”
In 2014, he obtained Cambodian citizenship and founded the Prince Group the following year. Since then, it has operated dozens of business entities in more than 30 countries. Apparently focused on real estate development, financial and consumer services, through covert operations, Chen and his executives transformed the business conglomerate into one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal organizations, integrating telecommunications fraud, online gambling and money laundering.
In October last year, US law enforcement uncovered a large-scale fraud case originating in Cambodia and confiscated 127,271 bitcoins. They were stored in non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets (those where the user has full control over their private keys and assets, not through intermediary entities) and Chen had all the passwords in his possession. With a total value estimated at about 15 billion dollars (about 12,843 million euros), it was announced as the largest seizure of crypto assets in the history of the United States.
The now detained man was “the mastermind behind an extensive cyber fraud empire that operated under the umbrella of the Prince Group, a criminal organization based on human suffering,” according to Deputy Attorney General for Homeland Security, John A. Eisenberg. “Trafficked workers were confined in prison-like compounds and forced to carry out online scams on an industrial scale, preying on thousands of people around the world, including many here in the United States.”
Chen allegedly operated “a vast criminal network across multiple continents, involving forced labor, money laundering, investment schemes and asset theft, targeting millions of innocent victims in the process,” FBI Director Kash Patel added.
In response to the US accusations, Chen’s team broke its silence for the first time in November. His legal team filed a motion with the US court to extend the deadline for the lawsuit and argued that the US Department of Justice’s accusations were “seriously erroneous” and that the US government had not provided evidence that the seized bitcoins were “directly linked” to the fraudulent activities, according to the aforementioned report. China News Weekly.
The United States Department of the Treasury has classified the group as a transnational criminal organization and has imposed sanctions on more than a hundred related individuals and entities. According to these sources, Chen holds British and Cambodian nationalities. He and his accomplices have allegedly laundered large sums of money to finance an extremely luxurious lifestyle, which included high-end watches and private jets. The British Government also froze his assets, including 19 properties located in London.
