The Underworld Podcast - Cambodia’s Untouchable Gangster-in-Chief

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Hun To, the nephew of Cambodia’s former PM, is also the ruler of a criminal empire stretching from illegal logging and Triad-run casinos, to corrupt Chinese investment and — ALLEGEDLY — people and heroin trafficking.Sean met Nathan Southern and Lindsey Kennedy at a Saigon studio to discuss a crazy tale of how the leaders of a small and economically weak nation have gotten wildly rich playing off global powers, and proving that for a small number of mobsters, you really can be too big to fail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points.

Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Bad advice? You talking to me? Kayak, got that right.

It's 2004 in Melbourne, Australia, and cops are it finally sings, onto Huntoe. The magnate, a nephew of Cambodian Premier Hun Sen, has built his business empire in one of the shadiest ways on earth. Chopping down lumber and timber from Cambodia's lush forests, then shipping it out, some might say trafficking it, to China and, on occasion, Australia. Those who speak out against the destruction at home, will they end up in prison or in exile? Or, like one local reporter in 1994, dead. But timber, Aussie cops ashore, isn't just the only thing Hentot is getting into their country. They launched Operation Ili Pango in 2002 to investigate heroin shipments smuggled inside the wood, which is getting out onto the streets of Australia's biggest cities, its proceeds washed via Chinese,

triads and, in one case, the Vietnamese Chinese owners of a well-known Sydney Asian restaurant. Hun To's father, Hun Neng, a regional governor in Cambodia, steps in on behalf of his son. Hunto is no drug trafficker, he claims. Perhaps the Australians, he adds, have gotten him confused with another Hun family member, a brother-in-law and former Cambodian Air Force General, awaiting trial for running his own cartel. Huntu's targeting, the father adds, it's just a quote, chance thing. But is it?

Typhani, the brother-in-law, but he was actually Honto's bodyguard and supposedly bought his Air Force rank through connections to, quote, powerful people in Cambodia, according to a Nazi investigative reporter. In other words, the Hunfam. Some chance connection, that. Operation Ilepango soon uncovers a heroin importation ring thought to be worth some billion dollars a year, with funds sent to a prominent Melbourne casino. Honto lives in Melbourne. He's got Aussie residency.

But before the cops can swoop, somebody at the Australian Embassy in Penhompin, Cambodia's capital city, cancels Hintos visa, with one official citing the need to avoid a major diplomatic incident. Some gangsters, it seems, they're just too big to fail. And with Ili Pango scuppered, cops in Australia have no choice but to watch Huntu's star rise even further, as Honsen tightens his grip on Cambodia's political scene. The country's forests are raised, its drug market skyrockets, and a new industry looms on the horizon, one that will reshape the Southeast Asian criminal landscape for decades to come.

It'll even spark a war. Welcome to a new era. Welcome to Cambodia. This is the Underworld podcast. Hi guys, welcome to the underworld podcast. I am Sean Williams. I didn't come into a bunch of money. I'm going to go back to recording out of my house next week.

But I'm in Saigon, Vietnam, where I've been for the last week on assignment. And I'm joined today by Nathan Southern and Lindsay Kennedy, two reporters who you've probably heard quite a lot from over the last few years doing the show, Friends of the Pod. They live and work in Panon Penh, Cambodia. and over the last couple of nights, which includes some strange bars and some pretty weird food. Vietnamese Greek, anybody?

They've been telling me about some of the crazy stories they've been following to do with organized crime and corruption in this part of the world. And as you heard from the cold open, we're going to talk about a guy called Honto. And a good place to start might be the beginning, which is kind of who this guy is, why is he important and when did you guys first start

sort of hearing about him and thanks for coming on the show by the way I should probably do that more professionally thank you for having the show I just like to see you in person you have a bottom half it turns out yeah it's not pretty but it's I think

Honto has just been this constant name in almost like Cambodia lore of organized crime and corruption like so he is the officially he's the nephew of the former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was in charge since the 90s until he handed over power to his son two years ago. So now, Honto, is now the cousin of the current Prime Minister.

And basically, through his whole life from his earliest beginnings, he's kind of running around in this kind of post-war, Cambodia, where it was a bit of a free-for-all for timber, drugs and small arms moving throughout the world. you had Camerooges insurgency groups, governments somewhere kind of in between, and they're making money from everything. And then Honto was very much part of that. So he started off life as a timber trafficker, you know, working with his very well-connected family and associates in like some of the most rural parts of Cambodia and he would get like luxury timber exports or sell a massive thing in Cambodia, things like Rosewood as a huge market in China for that. So it's like the bedrock of Cambodia's criminality.

And going back to the 90s, there's accusations of Honto's alleged involvement in quite widespread timber trafficking. And then that moved on to, which we can go into, accusations of smuggling heroin inside that timber. It goes to cops talking to us a few years ago about how if they receive massive shipments of seized drugs, someone will take it to someone who is allegedly a Honto's contact and he basically just distributes these drugs back out and then since then he's kind of shows this arc of Cambodia because it goes from what you would expect like lawless 90s 80s Cambodia to be which is like timber trafficking and drugs and this kind of like cowboy stuff to now him being the

director of what is being described as the biggest digital marketplace for criminality in the world. This dwarfs the Silk Road by billions of dollars. And it moves money for all the scam operations across Southeast Asia, Chinese triads and all their activities, Latin American drug cartels, North Korean crypto heists. And this guy who's a timber trafficker from rural Cambodia is now one of their directors of the biggest, like,

illegal digital marketplace in the world. So it shows us perfect arc of criminality of Cambodia and kind of where we're at. Yeah, I think like for like for people who don't like know the history of Cambodia and like the Khmer Rouge period and stuff. Like so the Khmer Rouge um were kind of like a very extreme Maoist group um that wanted to take the country back to year zero and hansen um was uh during during that during that during that during that during that during that during the uh during that for Kamaee Rouge years in the late 70s. And then he defected to Vietnam and was part of the kind of overthrow and then ended up being put in charge of the country.

But so him and his brothers were all kind of like, you know, boys from the village who had like kind of came up through like being child soldiers from like scrambling around the Kami Rage like would do a lot of logging to like fund their activities and stuff. But then what's kind of funny is that Honsen stayed in charge and then his kids then ended up being like, you know, your classic Nepo babies. They're all sent off to like, you know, fancy universities. His son goes to West Point. He's very sort of like, you know, he just seems like very much like the kind of person

who you can now introduce to other dignitaries kind of thing. He's like that kind of background. Whereas his, Hansen's brother, Hen Neng, who was then provincial governor of this area called Campon Chan, where they were from, his, you know, he's bringing up his sons, like, it's still chaos, you know? They're still running around, like, getting in gun fights, like getting into loads of trouble. and yeah, like, trafficking timber allegedly. We'll have to have a ticker down the bottom there.

And then, yeah, and then it kind of like that culminated. Yeah, like Nathan said, like in, there's this massive sting in, that was being planned in Australia where Hunter was apparently shipping in heroin in like in shipments of, of like illegal timber into Australia. So like, but it's like now it's kind of feels like very much that like he's still like the golden boy like and sense still like it's it feels always very much like he like lets him get away with all this stuff because his kids have grown up and they've become these like you know posh kids right and it's like that kind of like gangster mentality of like you know you kind of like you kind of like you get these like east land like east end gangsters

you kind of seem like they kind of resent the fact that their kids went to private school and now they kind of it feels a bit like that like he's kind of the favorite still because he's still like the rough and ready one like in the background kind of danny die or like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah The Stanley Dyer of Cambodia. You might call the episode day. But we started looking at this guy because, I mean, he's kind of notorious and always has been kind of notorious in Cambodia. But we were doing an investigation into an illegal logging in like 2021. And at that time, we were trying to work out like where these new logging trails were being built across the border lines and into Vietnam and into Thailand.

And we went to, so there's this other, I mean, for a guy, this guy is the biggest. timber trafficker in the country and his name is tree P-up genuinely which is great but he he just got this concession like on the Thai border and to build what we thought at the time was just a big sort of like logging depot depo and trafficking spot into Thailand and we went up there and we took all these photos at time and we noticed there was like all this weird stuff that was being built like there were these kind of like very heavily secured buildings that we didn't really know what they were like Chinese writing everywhere and this casino in the middle with writing which we realised later when we look back over the photos was the name of a company owned by

Hanto like on like it like on blazing on the side of it and it was only like years later that we were like piecing us together and we were like oh these were like the earliest scam compounds that like later came to like take over the whole country um where like there's like forced labor of people like doing online scams and like targeting people in um in china and and europe with like romance scams and stuff um and uh yeah so we kind of it's kind of yeah came full circle yeah yeah i think you're and doing a log investigation in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia and you see, you know, you're expecting to find like depots and warehouses where they hold the timber, but then you find like kind of half casino looking building with like cages on the window and you're like, well,

that stands out. That's a bit weird. And then like what it took is like two or three years to actually know what the hell was actually going on with that. So they've been planning it for years. This guy's been like at the heart of building this kind of criminal infrastructure that Cambodia has being based on, which is now spread across the region and is now worth 60% of Cambodia's GDP and the collective trade around South East Asia is possibly worth more than the entire drug trades and across the world now. So we're dropping huge levels of criminality and profit, just stemming from, yeah, what was originally a timber trafficking paradise now to the digital crime universe. It's crazy that I guess we've done loads of shows about Myanmar, Burma.

And that's seen as like the sort of ground zero for this entire industry. But the level of it in Cambodia is also pretty insane. I mean, you guys have been to some of the craziest parts of the world. You know, I've been to one of these SEZs, but you've kind of done the whole interrail trip around the worst places in Southeast Asia. Which one of them, like, which ones of those places stand out to you and kind of like trying? Yeah, I mean, you just mentioned some of the figures involved. The scale of this is unreal, right? It's one of the biggest kind of criminal industries, if not the biggest in the world.

I think that the really, yeah, the really crazy thing is like, yeah, like me and Mara is like a war zone, right? So you have pockets of like, like, it's a huge place and you have like, you know, you have different militias who are attached to like different scams cities that start in the middle of nowhere. And you kind of like, but you think, okay, well, that makes sense in as much as this is a country that's been on and off at war for however many decades, right? And then you have Vlaus where you've got pockets of this that have been basically sold to Chinese gangsters. It was one particular pocket of the Golden Triangle, Special Economic Zone, Kings Romans. It's been sold off to like, you know, this Chinese gangster to turn into this like scam and casino city. But what's completely insane about Cambodia is that the whole country's economy now runs on this. Like everywhere you look like to the point that, I mean, I think a lot of people have heard of Zinikville now,

which is like this place on the coast that became this like kind of. host a child of like what can go wrong when you sort of start licensing casinos on mass, right? And then just turn into this kind of organized Chinese organized crime playground. But like all every like all along the, all along the border areas, there's like, I mean, there's about just on the Thai-Cambodian border, there's about 50 different places now, which are like scam compound zones. Wow. Not buildings, but collections.

Yeah, yeah, like little like hubs. Towns, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And quite a lot of them, I mean, the Cambodian and Thailand went to war. earlier this year and quite a lot of them were like fired up by the Thai side as well um because a lot of these places like target Thai um Thai victims yeah that was nuts because they no one would sort

of come out and say why these random places that were ostensibly nothing to do with the the issue that they were fighting over were suddenly getting bombed yeah so it was kind of nuts because um the yeah some of these areas are like really close to where this contested that the war was meant to be over this like contested area where these temples are in the north um that they've been fighting over forever. But then, and some of these scam compounds are in that area. So it kind of made sort of sense that there were rockets being fired into these scam compounds. But then they started targeting this place that we,

that we said that we went to years ago and didn't realize what it was. That is like a hundred miles away. That's nothing to do with it. And one of the first places Thailand fired was like straight into this, this scam compound zone that's linked to Hanto. So yeah, so Thailand admitted before the conflict, like for months, they started releasing all these profiles. I actually have got the nation, which is a pro-military newspaper that you wouldn't normally go to for like good information, but then they started releasing these like really quite in-depth reports about a lot of the Cambodian figures involved. Yeah, I've met some of those.

This is pretty helpful, right? And it's like, and it's another source for it. And then they issued arrest warrants for like senators in Cambodia that were involved in this. But then once the actual fighting started, like they just went quiet on on any of the compounds they had except one compound, one casino, they had they said was holding a weaponry in it, which is also possible because like they they are all owned by senators are linked to people who are like, you know, involved with ruling family. So they could have been holding weapons. But even then they only admitted that it was a target after someone released a video of them quite clearly firing a rocket like straight into it.

It's the middle of nowhere. So then they had to like be like, oh wait, no, it was holding like weapons. That was why we did that. Before that I denied that it was a target. Yeah. And there was no mention in fact that they blew up this like part of this guy tree, 3P Yap's house. I mean, just like in the middle of like rural Cambodia. Like I mean, yeah, near the Thai border, but like you said, about 100 miles from any of this contested area. So I just don't mention that.

But then when the ceasefire comes in, they say, oh, we're going to now we're going to talk about cross-border scam cooperation, right? And that's going to go back to what you're saying. Like actually on like, so it, first of all, it's not just like the Thai border. Cambodia's border with Vietnam is, as has got less coverage, but like it's slowly building up. Like these cities are building up.

Like, you go there and you're looking at places like, I'd say like, like, what fair. like when we watch Seymnitville build up from being like what they always call like a dusty backpacker town but I mean it was it was full of sex pets but it was pretty it's pretty good to write in a byline yeah it's and um uh it like that scale of that city building in such a small thing we're seeing that happen but just for scams you're seeing these places get built like massive industrial scale construction people are already scamming inside it looks like people already trapped inside they're building along the vietnam border building along the tie border so you know both these countries are starting to get a bit like what we're right, what you did. Like, you set up these massive centres of, like, global criminality, right, on our border. And now the Thai's like, well, now we're having conversations about, like, cross-border collaboration on this.

But if you look at Thailand, Thailand always plays, like, it's a kind of neutral party, it's all these crazy states that are on their border. But then you've got to ask, like, well, like, well, okay, one of your borders is in the South, which you've had an ongoing, like, quite not-explainable Islamic insurgency, like, with Malaysian separatist groups for a long time.

And it seems from our research of the military are getting a kind of like a lot of their funding comes from that. So they're kind of happy to keep this low level conflict kind of brewing. And then there was a lot of more attacks actually during the conflict of Cambodia and the South. And their other partners are Laos where the going trial, especially economic zone is. And like all of the access of that is through Thailand. So you've got boats that are going across the river from Thailand. And like the only jobs that people are going for is going to be in the criminal world where that's, you know, drug, sex work or or. most likely scams. And we've seen people get trafficked out of the Golden Triangle and said to

Thai authorities, like, man, I think, I think these guys are at risk of trafficking. Like, there's a hotline number up there for trafficking. Can you do something about it? That doesn't go anywhere. You can phone it. And it's just empty. And there are other borders obviously, like, with Myanmar, which is the hub of these, the scam operations in like places like Schmeiko KK Park, who's been loads of coverage on. But what Thailand's always done has had a bit of an arrangement with, I think, the Golden Triangle Special Economics Own and those places in Myanmar on their border. It was like, well, you don't target ties. You don't traffic ties and you don't scam ties. Whereas Cambodians have been like, I'm going to scam anyone until we've got a deal,

right? And then they've continued doing that. But then what's happened is like, yeah, go and try and especially economics. When you were there, it's nuts, right? It's like wildlife for sale and like, I mean, you can buy like women to tigers to guns to meth. Yeah, my photographer nearly got killed by a tiger. What? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Guys, let's talk Razors. House of Atlas. I mean, you know me. I'm a man of luxury and taste, and I'm incredibly vain. I want to look as good as possible, and that is where these Atlas razors come in. I mean, just look at this thing. This is sleek. This is solid. They have been helping me, helping me do it, making shaving easy. I've been using their stuff all week. It's amazing. You know, I feel, I feel smooth. And if you use them, you're going to be the smoothest guy in the room. They've got these precision trim edges as well. We are talking. premium stuff here. Designed to flight clogging, sleek, solid, stainless steel, reinforced blades, and the shaving cream that they sent me the aftershave. I have some of it right here. It smells incredible. They all feel great. You're going to smell amazing too. And they're now available

at Target stores nationwide. You might have actually heard from the women in your life about Athena Club. It's a woman's razor brand. It's got the exact same creators. And if you know women using it, they rave about it, just like you're going to rave. about Atlas. And now for a limited time, they're offering 20% off sitewide, plus free shipping at House of Atlas.com. Just use Code Underworld at checkout. That's H-O-U-S-E-O-F-A-T-L-A-S.com with promo code Underworld for 20% off everything. Plus, House of Atlas is now available at Target stores nationwide. Stop wasting money and time on shaving products that don't look good, aren't effective and cost way too much.

Visit house of atlas.com today. Trust me, you'll love it as much as I did. I think I mentioned this on the show before. We're up one more. Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis. A once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month-month-longer dosing phase,

about four and 10 people taking ebblis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Ebglis, Librikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2mmiliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebbglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated without. Ebbglis. Before starting Ebbglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about ebbglis.com or call 1800 lilyr-X or 1-800 545-979. When the job gets tough, you need equipment that's built to handle it. The Cabota Construction lineup featuring the versatility to do more, durability to keep going, and increased comfort for long days on the job.

With skid steers, track loaders, wheel loaders, utility vehicles, and the world's number one selling compact excavator for 20 years, Our expanding lineup is built to deliver. Visit cabota USA.com or your local cabota dealer today to learn more. Go to cabotaUSA.com flash disclaimers for full disclaimers. One of the nights that we were there, we'd gone around. We're like, I want to find the tigers. They've got to be around there somewhere, big cages for the tigers.

Walk through old football pitchers, loads of kids playing. And sort of behind a bunch of scrubland hidden by palm trees, there are giant cages full of, I don't know, like 30 tigers, something like this. Oh, wow. So I was like, oh, okay, so me and my mate go out on the town to, like, get some information about the most hideous shit on the planet. But all the while, I tell my photographer, like, he doesn't want to have anything to do with this. So he's like, I'll get up early and take some pictures of the tigers. And then we wake up, me and my other mate the next morning, to a message on the WhatsApp group of, like, my photographer with a giant gash in his arm.

Oh, my gosh. And he was taking a picture of one and it leapt through the bars of the cage, grabbed him and tried to drag him in. He doesn't want to go out with you guys in case he gets in trouble at night and he's like, I'll do the early morning shoot. But yeah, he's like, if I'd fallen forwards I would have been dead. So that was fun for him.

So that's a story though. That mental place, when we were there, I was like, we didn't almost get killed by a tiger, but it was mental in its own ways. But like that was like, it's like the pinnacle of kind of crazy Southeast Asia. And always has been like anyone has been has got these stories.

What's nuts is, I think that now Cambodia has developed so much that it's not even that they've just got these special economic zones like that. It's like the whole country is becoming like a massive King Truman's Golden Triangle Special Economics Zone, right? So in Senatville, we've got into like some of the main compounds that have been briefly raided and they're filled up again a few weeks or months and you go in and they've got the adverts for wild life like there.

We know that some of the compounds are got tigers and lions in the cages just for fun for the gangsters like to play with or you know just be with or whatever yeah yeah and then that's kind of everywhere and it's but it's gotten this this mad level of criminality where kind of everything's acceptable almost like it's it's it's in louse where like they in was it i mean two years ago now there was like in central ponpenn and like like kind of where all the hipster bars are and all of the expats kind of hang out and like charity workers NGOs there was a line walking around that like you know the middle of the day and people like is that a big cat or Or is that a lion. Like, no, that, that's a lion.

That's, yeah. And there's some Chinese, like, Chinese billionaire dyncs are of a purple Lamborghini. And so then they send this. Apparently, like, someone was taking the rubbish out and didn't notice that the lion had followed them out. We've got to just what I mean. And then, like, so the, this NGO goes and, like, kind of seizes the lion and brings it to a reserve. And then the guy's like, yeah, okay, it's my lion.

But that might be illegal. But I love him. And me and my friends. The emotional support lion. Yeah, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like, he's like, he's got a friend the pit bull, like the pit terrier, like a little, some mix thing. And he was like this tiny little dog and he was like, look me, the little French guy and the tiger, the lion, sorry, are all like, you know, we're all mates, like, we're all really, really close. And then I'll prove it. And they go into the cage at this reserve and he walks in with the tiny dog and it was like, that tiny dog's going to get eaten. But they walk up and the lion's like,

and he gives them like a big hug and like is like nuzzling with the tiny dog. So then Huntson comes out. It was still the person. at the time, I went, yeah, it seems pretty obvious that you are pretty connected with this line. So I think we can give you back the, it was like $50,000 fine or $10,000 fine, and we'll let you take the line back. But even more insane than that, it's... I'd have made him kiss it. But also, like, all of these, like, wildlife trafficking charities had, like, spent years and years and years, like, trying to get the law change so you can't keep exotic pets. And, like, they've made loads of really good progress.

And then Hunter & just went, oh, you know what? like maybe maybe people should be allowed to have pets like that. Like, you know, maybe, and they just literally just rolled back all of this, like that day. And it was like 30 years of progress on like, well, it's kind of like anti-worldlife trafficking over it, overnight. But also, we've been trying to get a hold of this guy for a while to try and interview him. But we were mostly interested in how he got the lion into the country in the first place. And, yeah, like they were speaking to his assistant.

And then she said, oh, actually, I'm not sure he wants to do the interview this week because he doesn't want to talk about the second lion. we were like, what second line? I was like, you had one job, which was, like, keeping this a secret. Yeah, it's like, one line doesn't satisfy his emotional needs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like, yeah, the second line, we don't want to tell journalists about it. It was like, who do you think I am?

Like, I told you what this was. And then, like, and then, like, continue talking. Like, well, anyway, the two lines and the new tiger, we're moving to, we're moving up to Mondo Keri. We've got some land. Like, it's not, say, it's not, you know, fair to keep them in a prompene apartment. I was like, there's a tiger now. And that's just, like, kind of all announced and it's fine.

So yeah, like, yeah, like, so Cambodia is becoming like just basically one massive bone triangle, special economy. So anything does go. Yeah. So like, so this place that Hunter is connected to on the Thai border that we were talking about, that's kind of like this scam hub with like a casino in the middle, a bunch of people have been rescued from, from like modern slavery. It's also kind of like a logging route into Thailand. That that whole area has now been like sanctioned by like the US twice now in different ways. And the companies that he's involved in, like the Heng Hay group, they've also got this area that's a huge, like, scam compound zone on the opposite side of the country, on the Vietnam border, which also just got sanctioned. But like loads of the, but several of the most

senior people in the, in those companies, they were all individually sanctioned apart from Han-Zo. Like, he's just like, they seem to be sanctioning everyone all around him constantly, not this guy, right? But this place is like getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's kind of, it's insane. And when we, were there last month I think um we went to go to we went to a vet we were looking at the scale of it how yeah how much bigger it's getting and um and i was looking because there's people like on ticot trying to recruit more people to come and work for these on like these illegal online gambling companies in this zone as well right so there are people like online talking about how great it is in

there even though it's you know pretty horrific from everyone we've ever met that's managed to escape um and one person that was talking about working there mentioned in passing in vietnamese like this the name of another location that we hadn't heard of, which is about like 50 miles away. And we drove up there and we got there in the middle of the night. And it was this entire, there's another entire scam town that had been built so quickly that it wasn't even on

like Google Maps, like Google Earth. Like, you couldn't see any trace of it. And these places are just like springing up all along the border. So yeah, it's just like the entire country's economy is just completely subsumed with this. Like I don't even know how they would survive if they tried to shut it down at this point. That place is like half a kilometre from

a Vietnam border checkpoint that's not open, but they're announcing plans to open that in the next few months. So they build the scam city and then they're going to open the border up with Vietnam so people can flow in and out so easily. So it's like it's part of their kind of the actual economy of the country. Like so much drives. It's their cross-border financing of everything.

And Honto is kind of like at the heart of so, so much of this. And he just won't get sanctions. So it makes like, I mean, it's nice to be able to do this podcast for some reason. We think we're not going to get sued. Allegedly. allegedly. Like allegedly at the heart of every criminal operation. Yeah. Just like me, I just hope he doesn't subscribe to your Patreon. And yeah, I mean, even like, yeah, when, when Yon, which is like the, yeah, the digital marketplace for all things crime, like that gets not sanctioned, but blacklisted

by the United States as a primary concern for money laundering. And he's a, he was a director of it and still doesn't get sanctioned. He's director of all of these other companies that have been sanctioned. He's like around all of it. The fact that, you know, when he went, when that trafficking with heroin and timber case came up in 2003, you know, apparently the only reason he didn't end up going to prison was because he went in for his Australian visa and Australians were like, yeah, listen, maybe don't go to Australia right now. Like, you might get arrested for heroin smuggling. And he denies all charges. But him and his wife own like, I mean, they own like over a million dollars worth of property in Australia as well and a bunch of companies and their kids go to school there. So I think there's like quite a lot of connections.

But there's, it's kind of like part of a broader problem as well where like a lot of, a lot of fact, Cambodian elites like will go and park their money in Australia, especially Melbourne specifically. And like right before the last, not the last election, the one before when they were still pretending it was a real election before they shut down all of the opposition parties. Pretty much. There was like an actual like official report was released by the government talking about how they were dividing that they were providing Australia into seven areas.

and like appointing a different like kind of Cambodian like a government elite in each one of these areas to be like yeah like like it'd be like the point of contact who would then the idea was meant to be oh you know we're going to try and like be a kind of cultural centre point for Cambodian

people in that area and we're going to like hold banquets and we're going to like but what what Cambodian the Cambodiaspora was saying in Australia is we're being threatened we're being told that if our family don't vote for the right people back home then they're going to like you know they're going to be harassed there if we say anything online that's against, like, concern, even though we're

Australian, we're getting threatened in our homes. And they were, like, Australian senators, like, or senators, law because worthy of criminals. Like, like, saying in, like, government hearings in Australia, we're really concerned that, like, the

Cambodian elites are here threatening people in Australian soil and, like, nothing was done about it. So it's just like multi-layer protection. So, like, people don't write about them that much because they're worried about getting sued, right? And all of these, like, Cambodian gangsters now have corporations, right? And they have corporate social responsibility departments.

And they, and they, like, threaten lawsuits to journalists and editors all the time. And I think Honto was simultaneously suing the Australian owned by Rupert Mardock and Al Jazeera in the same year. So to sue the Qatari government and Rupert Mardoc at the same time is pretty bold, right? And at the same time, I've got this thing where we'll no one, even in other countries are going to talk about it if they have a Cambodian route. Because, like, much like the Chinese do with these, like, secret Chinese police stations that have been uncovered around the world where yeah it sounds similar to it's really similar yeah it's like go around make sure that none of the students are talking about the Uyghurs or like Taiwan it's similar with this seemingly like insignificant small southeast station country and they're going around threatening in australia but

also evidence of the united states as well and um i think that's a big part of people are scared to speak out in australia so they're not speaking about the fact that they're like laundering like hundreds and hundreds and millions of dollars into their casinos their property markets um and then means there's no push for Australians to be like, we need to sanction some of these guys, because it's not coming out. So just getting away with it. And then they're putting more and more money in.

So it becomes more awkward for countries like Australia to actually sanction them, because then you've got millions of dollars of property, you'd have to look at asset seizures. And then that's core cases. And he loves a core case. So you just like brought into all these legal disputes. So it just becomes too complicated.

And then you just kind of like, he doesn't slip through the cracks. Everyone is screaming like quietly. Like, why are we not sanctioning this guy? We've no system for you trying to smuggle hair went into the country and now he runs the biggest allegedly allegedly and that's just the Australian saying I think this guy just loves trees and and now he runs like the biggest like money laundering platform in the world ever and he's still not getting sanctioned yeah the US says that that he that his platform moved about I think it was four billion dollars in illegal proceeds I think it was

um which is like it's completely insane but also like in this transparency international came out last year and said that just in the just through legal means half a billion dollars a year is going from Cambodia to Australia and like Cambodia doesn't have a big economy right and that's just the legal bit right not all of the actual laundered like the actual sort of like under the table laundering happening rather than like buying up assets and a lot of this has coincided and increased when since China started investing heavily and Chinese gangsters started partnering with Cambodian elites so a lot of that money is also Chinese organized crime money that's getting into Australia it's all insane you can understand it.

You can understand the fact that China is doing stuff like this, like one of the most powerful countries on Earth. But Cambodia is a small, not particularly powerful on the face of it, country. And it's sort of wielding extraordinary power through this. Yeah, Cambodia's such an interesting case because everyone always thinks they can control it. Like, you know, China thought that it would basically be their kind of vassal state, the way that Laos has been, to be honest.

And America always thinks they can sort of tell Cambodia what to do. Like, everyone always thinks Cambodia is a civil country. like they haven't got enough, they haven't got any money, like they're going to be easy to push around. And for all the ways in which the concern is a terrifying person, he is actually a kind of a political genius. He's managed to play off all of the major powers against each other for years and years and years and get his own way

and stay absolutely at the center of like politics for like 30-something years, right? And it's really quite impressive to watch. But also like, yeah, this kind of central family and this kind of like small group of elites have a massive, all the wealth in the country. And now they're running out increasingly of natural resources because, you know, they've logged all the forests and, like, there's only so much you can do with mining

and, like, there's also, yeah. Yeah, like, you know, all the natural resources are disappearing. They've basically figured out that, oh, wait, we can become, we can become a home for casinos, online scams, illegal gambling, and then this enormous money laundering thing. And it's just so interesting because, you know, like these are like guys, like I was saying, who they're all from the countryside.

They're used to, they're used to doing illegal logging and running around with guns. And they're not like sophisticated tech people. They didn't go to, they didn't finish school. They were child soldiers, right? But somehow they figured out that, oh, wait, we can just go into this extremely sort of like cutting edge, like crypto-based platforms that are all like now used to launder

just insane amounts of money for like a Chinese mafia. And they just made that transition quite seamlessly. So they've made themselves kind of like one of the hearts of kind of like illicit funds flowing through the world, which is just like kind of incredible to watch. Yeah, yeah. So what's the drug situation there? Then you mentioned this plan allegedly to smuggle heroin in through Rosewood imports. But is that what's coming out of the country? Like how's in terms of, you know, meth and other... So it used to be heroin, right? And in Cambodia, was accused of being like a narco state in the 90s, right? And at that time, we're like, it wasn't just timber. It was, it was guns from the war. It was, but it was moving a war. of drugs for it and at that time it was mostly heroin from the Golden Triangle and then

Cambodia was a good point to ship that out of the country and out of the region and then a lot of the seizures that happened seem to end up in the pockets of like elites politicians like military officers and then they were moving that out so heroin was a big thing for a long time but then like as global drug markets changed that had a big impact on on that trade in Cambodia so much like the rest of Southeast Asia Cambodia shift to meth and like

when like the world kind of like we know that Myanmar is the world's biggest producer of meth and femamine and that the market for that is actually worth more than the like land American cocaine trade is absolutely enormous but Cambodia has quietly become quite a massive producer

now of meth and femamine as well and I think like UNODC were like two or two years ago we're doing like one like assisting on one raid in prom pen for a factory and accidentally found like three more that day and it's it's everywhere. And so it's it's these these connections are being made. So they also make a lot of Ketman as well. But these connections have been made where they're laundering money for Chinese criminal groups. They're

laundering money for Latin American drug cartels. And then as those connections are being made, then too there's trafficking connections as well. So now it's becoming a transit point for a lot more drugs that are coming through. So it can be a point of coming through, seen it bill, that cocaine can be moving through richer parts of Asia. And then the methamphetamine is flowing throughout the region and then possibly onto Australia and New Zealand. So that actually has got a lot less coverage right now than the scams. But the drug situation is huge and the amount of money being made in it is huge. But it's all, goes back to how Cambodia has become this hub. Like we can clean your money, we can move your

illicit products, and you can do it all from this kind of unassuming country. So I always say it's like a Chamber of Commerce or Organised Crimes. You've got the Russian mafia, you've got Japanese yakuza-ish guys, you've got Chinese triads, you've got like some dodgy Americans, you've got all of these organised train groups, but they're all coming in and they're all working together. The thing is like that there is so, there are like meth labs all over the place, and they turn up now and again and get sort of uncovered by accident, but they, but the value of the drug, it's like one of the few places in the world with the value of the drug trade, even though it's huge, it's just so much less than other forms of like other forms of criminality. And and like

the, with the online scams and the illegal gambling stuff, it's just so, and money laundering, it's like so low risk because you don't have to physically move anything, right? You're just like, well, people, I guess, but you don't have to physically move anything out of your compound. So, I think they've just figured out they could just make so much more money out of this as well. And for some ridiculous reason, like the Americans really only care about drugs. And so it means that, like, oh, if you're caught, like, moving a lot of them, they're, they're quite good at keeping it a bit quieter than what, what me and Mars doing. But then you've got, Huntle moves from alleged heroin into scams.

I'm sure he's still got involvement in other trades. But it just makes so much sense because now, even if America announces the odd sanction or says we need to do something about this, USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle.

Restrictions apply. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is ours.

It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now pay never. For the moments that matter, choose Curad Naturals. Infused with aloe vera and vitamin E, Kyrad Natural's bandages protect your unexpected scrapes, cuts, and burns, while also moisturizing your skin.

Find deeper relief with natural ingredients you can trust to start the healing. When life surprises call for the best, choose Kyrad, a deeper level of care. Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit Kierad.com to learn more. not really going for it. They're not really, really cracking down on it. Because with drugs, it's still seen as this massive wind. Like, look, we've seized this many, you know, kilos, and then we can do a photo op. And if we say we did it in the, like, Lawless Golden Triangle area, or like, we mix, like, I mean, they're, obviously they're, um, designating, uh, cartel groups now

as, as terrorists, right? So it's like enemy number one. But actually, the, the loss to American economy and to people's lives, I would say it's much more. significant than say even like the fence no trade that's like moving into the US because this is taking billions a year of like capital outflow out of the US economy but also just taking like regular people's entire pensions or entire incomes like everything they're they're completely broken they're they're completely decimated and then there's so much focus on this product that I mean essentially people do want right I think we can argue about whether they should take

it or not but they do and like I mean the majority of meth is taken by truck drivers and construction workers to keep on working like and and and It's a crazy trade. There's a lot of layers to it. But at the end of the day, there is a user at the end of that process who wants that thing. With scams, no one wants that.

Money laundering. No one wants that other than within this criminal sphere. And so you know, if we just keep working on that, they can have just enough leverage to do the odd trackdown to keep China happy or to maybe keep America happy. And then going back to Hun Sen, this amazing political operator, or he somehow has a war with Thailand

and comes out in both China and America are both, like, sucking up to Hun Sen. both, like, we'll give you more military cooperation, more, more kept, like, more planes. We'll do whatever you want. And, like, you know, Hansen's like, oh, yeah, maybe we'll rename a road, Donald Trump road. And that's enough to keep them on the edge. And then, like, cool things to win the Nobel Peace Prize and stuff. And that was enough just to get them completely on side and, like, get so much lack up for them. It's, like, unbelievable. And the guy who called for him to get a Nobel Peace Prize, originally, a guy called Sun Chantal, who's now the deputy prime minister. And this guy has been at the heart of

approving pretty much every massive Chinese built on roads an initiative investment into Cambodia that has also been linked to every bit of criminality from timber smuggling to the scam trade. So building

insanely like developed and incredible roads through like land mine filled mountains to what is like is a town that was just used for a lot of. Yeah the one we were talking about where specifically this one that got fired into that um that has this casino with Hunter's branding on it.

Like this guy is the person who decided that the second, that, when all of Cambodia's roads were like a complete mess, when they first got money in from China, they focused on building an expressway to Seneca, which did kind of make sense because there's a port there. And the second one for the entire country, they were like, oh yeah, let's build this insanely complicated. I think it costs like $2 billion.

Like it's insanely complicated road that just goes up through the mountains, they're through these landmined areas, and the only thing it leads to, is this scam hub and logging route into Thailand. And still now, you don't see any other cars or trucks or anything coming down there, apart from, like, people being trafficked. See logging carts and, like, triath and avans.

And it's insane. You know, they could have built like a lovely road to seem reap, which they did the bell, but it wasn't, it wasn't number two. Yeah. Right. And that would, like, tourists going from Provenancy, no, no, no, no, no, to that weird little, like, log in town, it turns out to now be a scam hub.

And so they're like, this guy is directly, like, directing all of these investments into building, is enormous criminal infrastructure basically. And he is the guy that is then also inviting Starlink into Cambodia, of which there's no real need. Cambodia has pretty good like 4G connection, 5G connection. It doesn't really need it. But I'll tell you what it would be great for is scam hubs, right?

It's been finding Starlink's been used in Myanmar. It means you can't really cut off that connection. It's been used by criminal groups and militant groups around the world, right? And now he's fostering these relationships. He's going over to California. He's doing this. and he's the one that's like nominating Donald Trump originally for the Peace Prize. And then no one's saying,

but he's okaying all of the Chinese criminal infrastructure. It's also like linked to Chinese security and like all of their soft power interest. But like no one's connecting that because the Americans like, oh, well, there's money too made. I know he's complimenting Donald Trump. The BRI, for anyone it doesn't know, it's the biggest public infrastructure plan ever by a mile. Like makes the Marshall Plan look like a small mom and pop bank, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like all over the world anywhere from Romania. to like the Pacific Islands. And in Southeast Asia, it's everywhere, right? Basically, every giant public works is pretty much going to have Chinese BRI money. But also the thing I think that it's often like, I mean, and it is definitely obviously a big soft power thing, but it also, I think something it doesn't get, it kind of gets left out a lot is that China was having like massive problems economically at home.

So they, so the way the BRA works is they basically say, will lend you the money to build like, you know, this, this highway or whatever, this port. But you have to hire a Chinese, like a Chinese state-owned construction company to go build it. So they get all the money back, basically, immediately, because they get hired to do it. And you still owe them the money from the loan that you got in the first place. Yeah, those are Chinese state railway companies and like cement works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like hundreds of billions of dollars, right?

It's insane money. Yeah. And in places like Cambodia, they turned up to build, like, you know, the genuine stuff, like the ports and the roads. But then those same companies were then hired by gang systems. build these scam compounds and stuff. So, like, China made quite a lot of money, ultimately, because their state-owned enterprises out of these places being built, even if they weren't, like, directing them in the first place.

And that's kind of... Not even if you wander into the debt trap theories. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's just a safe mafia connection. But yeah. Yeah, how closely are those sort of BRI projects then in Cambodia and elsewhere in the region? And are they, like, directly linked to Chinese organized criminal groups? Well, well, yeah.

I mean, like, yeah, I mean, to do another allegedly. Yeah, probably. This isn't even allegedly. I mean, like, Chinese, like, so it's kind of like, we call it like this, like the shadow BRI basically, right? Well, like, you have your real BRI projects. And then you have, like, China doesn't release an official list of what's a BRI project as well. So, which makes it much more confusing. So you have like all the official stuff.

And then you have all the gangsters, like following them around, like where, where the new places are. Sort of like making use the fact there's like new roads and ports and things that make it easier as well. But also just like following around where these areas. are and building these things like scam compounds and casinos, making out their part of the BRI, even when they're not hiring the same companies who are state-owned to build them. So it's like not an accident. They're literally following them around. And by the time they're built and people realize that, oh, wait, that's a massive criminal enterprise. It's kind of too late because it's already there. So it's not that like China's like, Mojaha, we're evil. You know, we're like evil.

We're going to like fill the place with organized crime, I don't think. But they do kind of follow the BRI around and set up. And that's what's happened in Cambodia and Myanmar in places. Then there are groups that, like, we've spoken before about the Hongman, right? And then there's, yeah, people can, what was it, like two or three years ago we did a show that was about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, so there's like a kind of quick recap about this, Wan Kat Koi, also known as Broken Tuf, basically the head of the 14K triads in Macau, arrested during a screening of his own film in a middle of a, like, triad war he initiated. And then, like, does, I think 14 years in prison, gets out in 2012 and says the government,

I am no longer the head of the triads. But because at that point, Macau had switched back from, like, Portuguese rule to Chinese rule. So he came out and was like, oh, now I'm a patriot and I'm not a gangster anymore. Yeah, definitely not in the mafia. Totally not. Now I've started the Hongman Association, like, a patriotic group for Chinese interests abroad. And I would like to offer my services to do security for the Belt and Road initiative around the world. And then Chinese government's like, yeah, that's totally normal.

Yeah, like jump on in. Like, the Chinese government needs the help of this gangster that's been in prison for 12 years, do their security for some railways in Southeast Asia. And he comes out and he sets up specifically in Cambodia and has like deputy prime ministers. He has like senior generals in the military like at the opening of his Hongman association. The Hongman becomes sanctioned in 2020 by the US government because they're linked to both the triads and the Chinese government.

And then they are they're kind of this bridge between the criminality and the BRI. So you'll find them in essentially any country, often countries that have diplomatic relations. of Taiwan, if you look at any of them in seemingly unimportant countries, like Belize or Palau, Palau is the really, really big one, then you have them there doing the crime, right? Doing the organized crime, almost like as a soft power for China, but also raising a lot of capital and also they can invest in building these casino, city, like mega SECZ projects, and China can kind of claim them as their own project, and maybe they're actually

funding the capital for them. And then America's got military interest there. And then you've got the Hongman in Palau. You've got Prince Group, which is a Chinese-owned but Cambodian company, because the owners now become Cambodian. And they basically, each of them own half of this island of Palau and own all the infrastructure for like, and they've just got scam compounds now in casinos all around this area

where the US have their military base. So there's like a direct connection between like Chinese soft power, Chinese hard power and raising like, like a shitload of capital through this like organized crime infrastructure they have. And it does go global, like the Chinese organized crime have become massive players and obviously fentanyl in the US. Like you guys did a great show about the weed industry in the US. You know, like heroin moving through Central Asia, obviously Myanmar and Cambodia, meth trade.

Like China is at the heart of all of that and obviously the scam trade. And that's a huge, huge part of it. But then where all these companies go to bring it back, also you find links in most of those countries to Yon, which is this digital marketplace, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's there. Just, I mean, like, this isn't like some really, like, shady, like, dark net. Like, you'd need to really know what you're doing. It's like, find a way into this Yon, right? Why does QR code so you can pay for stuff in, like, in, like, grocery shows and stuff in, like, Okay, so it's like a full customer facing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's primarily...

It's got adverts in the airport and on the bridges on the way to Seenicville for it. And then when they got sanctioned, they just changed it to like H-PA or like a different variation. And the new advert goes up with the new name. But you go on their website and it's got a link to Telegram. And most of the criminal transactions are done for these telegram pages on Yon's website. So you click on the telegram and then it takes you minutes. And you can be on a chat where people are like, yeah, looking to... looking to buy some Pakistani guys for some scams out in Myanmar.

I'm like, yeah, I got some Pakistanis. Like, oh, I'm looking to buy like some money laundering services. And they sometimes are in code, sometimes they're not. And they're just saying, like, yeah, I can do money laundering. Yeah, we can do drugs. We can do weapons. We can, we can sell people across borders. We can, we can okay all that.

Is everyone got cash to convert to crypto? All of that's just done on these pages that you can find in minutes. So, like, why on had like three sort of three parts. So it had like the payment platform, which is like anyone can sign up and have a, and like how and be and use that really and then it had this like escrow service thing which is what um name's talking about where basically it you would one person would say i've made this payment it was normally using um won't pay um and then someone else would say and then like okay i've received it and it was basically was like a way of proving that payments have been made so it was kind

like this kind of like guarantee service called one guarantee so like guarantee that these illegal payments had been made and that was like where most of the illegal activity was happening and And then they also started their own like crypto platform, which is like completely proprietors. So like no one else can ever like, you know, regulate it. So they were like three parts to it basically. It's still going. Yeah.

So I guess the story a few years ago was Silk Road being this gigantic criminal marketplace. But this, you know, I guess blows it way out of the water then, does it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that what's so scary about this is like it's not only is like, I think that, I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are, but the value of it's bigger than, um, to what crowed ever was. But it's also, yeah, it's like in the billions and billions. But then it's also linked directly into payment services, which are part of like the like proper sort or like payment ecosystem. So the criminal economy has become the economy. Yeah, exactly.

Like you were just saying with the scams and everything as well. Yeah, it like leaks into like, yeah, leaks into like the normal banking system and stuff. It's like so easily done. And yeah, and I think that and it's so hard to like actually put that back and like, it's so hard to actually contain that. And yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, completely nuts. So the, I mean, the guy, so Hunter, like, he owns, he founded, like, Yon, but then he also owns this other bank, which

is everything is quite clearly sort of, like, shifting onto, which has not been, in the last like sanctions decisions from the US, they specifically name this bank and they sanctioned the other two guys that founded it with him and mentioned them by name, mentioned the bank by name, but then didn't sanction it. So this bank is still going,

even though it's been, so it's part of the same. Well, I think it's because like, he, you know, he's Because he is so influential in Australia, and it would, because he is sort of like the golden child and he's like, you know, nephew of Hun Sen, cousin of current Prime Minister, it would just be such a massive diplomatic thing for them to actually target him. And at the moment, Australia is like massively trying to like, well, has been like getting way more things like, like gold mining contracts and stuff in Cambodia. And like, you know, I don't think. going through Honto as well. Well, he owns a lot of those areas, I think.

Yeah, I mean, there was an accusation of, like, from a Cambodian, like, business tycoon, saying that, I think this all started because he accused Honto of taking $9 million from, like, a mining organization to get, like, an agreement in place in Cambodia, maybe for, like, maybe for gold mining. And then he said, Honto just stole the $9 million.

This is now as well. This is like, right? right now last year and then um then he came out in facebook and say like and it like started releasing these like insane statements saying this is like all a criminal government and like um honto is is more powerful than the criminal justice system and the courts and cambodia won't stand for this but then well he was then uh issued a red nose by interpals from the cambodian government so this guy this guy um he like because he's also like in the It's called Ognia. It's like you basically pay money for this title that's a bit, somewhere between like a tycoon and a lord, basically.

And so he's like, he was a powerful guy in his own right. Then he like runs away, runs off to Russia. He's like, takes all these photos of himself like with like Russian flags all over like in like military uniform. Rights is kind of like slightly unhinged, but like all rants all over Facebook and stuff because these guys still use Facebook really. They're that generation. And about like how this is like that, you know, Hunter is like the biggest gangster. and he runs all the scam places and blah blah and he stole this money from Chinese investors gets to Russia thinks I think he's safe there and then Cambodia does actually put out like an

Interpol red notice and Russia sent him back and now he's in prison in Phnom Penh. So his Facebook page is still up in the last few posts are like, Cambodia won't stand for this criminality and we're like, oh buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're now rotten in Cambodian prison because I'm like, yeah, this Facebook beef that you started with Huntoo. and that shows like the level of it so people may think he's like he always as he went quiet like he's but it's not the same as like before when he's like involved in the timber and a heroin

and it's like well no like he then something just comes out like this where someone gets in a Facebook argument and then the guy ends up getting extradited from Russia so like his power is just insane yeah yeah and the whole world knows who he is and like it still refuses the sanctions still refuses to arrest him and still just allows him to operate these criminal industries that are like eviscerating the economy. of Australia, European Union, UK, US, Canada, but no one will actually go after him because he's intertwined themselves so much within the economies of many of those countries that it just becomes too complicated.

And then if you want to keep a relationship in Cambodia, it's seen as going too far. Like it's seen as if you go after Hun Sen's nephew, then you're really going to fracture that relationship and they're going to run to China. But Hun Sen has been playing this game with him for years and years. And like, it's a small, what should be, in significant. significant country and has been playing China and the US off against each other. It's the point that both of these countries are massively impacted by the scam and drug economy that's been led by Cambodia.

This should be the one place that they should be working in collaboration together, right? But somehow they're both fighting against each other to build more relationship with Cambodia. And the way that Huns sense played that is just absolutely incredible. We, like, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are like, basically he's like puppeting them. At the same time the US announces these new sanctions, the US Embassy is in Scenicville, like not far from one of the biggest known slave trafficking compounds, like the Kaibo complex in Autres. And the US Embassy is like planting a tree with the Cambodian government, like near that place. And it's not to like say that the US Embassy is like directly like doing anything particularly wrong.

they're just doing their job of diplomacy in the country, but you're like, these guys are just openly running this, like, mafia country, just ripping billions of dollars from you, and you and China continue to just play this game of like, oh, no, like me, like me, Cambodia. It's insane. And actually, one thing that was really interesting

that was in your foreign policy piece that you released, and we'll stick it on the show notes, was how the Hun family, like, just has to, basically stay like elitly powerful right otherwise the whole house of cars falls apart so you could could you tell us about how that power system works because it's kind of it's all predicated on their gatekeeping right

yeah so it's kind of like it's called like the patchner system and I mean different different countries have like different variations on this right but in in Cambodia it's just like so intense so basically like no one you can't get anything done in Cambodia like at scale like you can't like own any big business or anything unless you you normally have to sort of buy this Okina title, which means this tycoon lordship thing, right? And you pay, like, I think it's like half a million dollars

to the government to get this title in the first place. And then it kind of, you get the title, but it also signals to other governments and other, like, regulators and stuff, but that you are like a favourite of the government, and they should basically green light your stuff, right? Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.

They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss.

Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants assistants switch. you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required.

Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is quite so you have to do that. But then you also have to have, like normally some kind of protection from police or military who you'll, you know, you'll normally hire these guys to literally protect and facilitate your business is or whatever kind of business it is.

So if it's a scam compound, you might hire these people as like bodyguards. If it's like, if you're moving something else, you might hire them to like escort this right through the country. So you have to have like both of these sides and then you have to have political like influence as well. So basically you have to have political influence. You have like the, but you have to have like personal wealth and like an Okina position or someone who is an Okina on your side and you have to have someone in the security forces.

And what happens is. is that pretty much everyone who works in any kind of form of government-connected, military, police-connected job, either pays part of their salary every month to their superior and it all goes up in this giant pyramid scheme at the top. Or, and or they pay for their position in the first place, and they pay us like a part of all of the money they get from anything illegal they do on the side to their boss.

So what it means is all this money is constantly flowing up the shame to people at the top. And in return, they have to kind of give you protection. you know in return for you if you want to open a scam compound for example you know you've done your bit you've paid up through this chain but in return the government has to know that they can basically make sure that your scam compound's never going to shut down right so it all so if they if they stop being able to offer that protection you stop being like well why do i pay my money up the chain and then the whole thing falls apart so they kind of have that's how they like stay being sent of power all the time and also why they don't really have that many challenges to their power

because everyone no one wants chaos right no one wants their business going into chaos and this goes this goes back to the post-war Cambodia. I mean, like, Cambodia is like, it is, I mean, despite the amount of Rojas and Ferraris on the road right now, it is still a very poor country. Like that money is only shared among a very, very select few. I mean, last time we got this unequal, some things happened. But like, it's insane amount of money, but overall, the country is very poor.

Like, you know, war torn for decades. Like, it should, like, by that logic, still be a place with confidence. brewing, right? But it has been overall stable for like, I mean, about 30 years or so. And like Hun Sen's kind of catchphrase is thank you peace, right? And it's kind of got a point. Like he's made this place peaceful. He's made this place stable. It wore a bit thing this year when they were literally at war, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like people were still saying thank you peace. And I'm like, I'm not sure if they'd like just stopped like creating the signs for like a few months, but they're coming back out now

and they're saying again, thank you for for peace. And but like when, When the war was ending, like the original war, not the recent war, the country, to actually consolidate control over this place was going to be really, really difficult. For Huntsin to not have someone attempt to coup every few months was going to be incredibly challenging. And the way he did it was like, yeah, he basically made these fiefdoms. Like he separated the country up into these different districts and every like governor or tycoon was given a license to basically go and do a certain

illegal activity and a lot of it at the time was logging. So you are out in a place like Koukong and you can run illegal logging industry, like pillage the forest in your country, send it through Thailand, make millions, make billions, pay up the chain. And then you've created these really, really powerful, like well, like, well connected to security forces, like military and police in their own district, like groups of like tycoons. But everyone who is rich enough and who has enough potential guns behind them doesn't want to take over the country because they're making enough money, right? Everyone's got their Lexus, everyone's got their massive bit of land, everyone's making enough money. They don't necessarily need to be the top dog

to be able to do this. They're left to do their criminality. And that's what led into this scam business operating and people like Hunt-Oll being, like knowing how to play all of these provincial authorities and knowing how to get the, get the licenses, get the agreement so they could get the land, the SEZ built, they could build the compounds, they could get the protection. Working with someone like that as like your broker is your connection between your criminality and the top level of government. And it creates us just this thick layer of protection throughout and then like the next stage is to put it into the 21st century and then bring in this crypto and digital transactions and then everyone is also encouraged to use those platforms, to use his banking

service because it's part of this like enshrined network of not so much corruption but just everyone relies on everyone and you need to make these little overtures to the other people in the network to show that you're working with them. A lot of that money still stay in Cambodia. People in Cambodia are getting richer, the right people are getting richer for the ruling family. So everyone stays happy. And then that is like exported internationally and then people come in and it is like these local brokers, these local well-connected people that are able to take the Chinese mafia or the Japanese mafia and show them how it works, show them how you can become part of that. So it's less that the Chinese mafia has taken over the country.

It's more that they're playing into these systems of sanctions criminality that have always been allowed to happen. Yeah. And it really suits like foreign, especially like Chinese investors, but like foreign investors generally wants stability, right? So like like working with democratic countries, sometimes like if you're investing like billions into that country, you're like, like, you know, like if you've got a trump, they might just tear everything up when they come into power.

Like, you know, what deals are going to. Whereas like they actually, if like both like, especially China, but the Chinese government, and Chinese gangsters, this system works great for them. Because even if you have to pay quite substantial bribes to get it, to get their pay to play, at least you know what you're dealing with, right? You know, once you've set that up, you know, you've got, you know, all of your investments, I guess, are protected. So, yeah, it works for them.

I guess a final question on this guy is, how are you going to go back to Penh, stuff about the most powerful gangster in the country? Well, yeah, like allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah, yeah. Businessmen. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is, I mean, yeah, the thing is that this, you know, this family, they're so powerful, like, that I think that they, I mean, they, they, yeah, they've never really stopped, he's, he's never actually completely stopped being a bit of a, like, you can't quite get the gangster stuff out of his system. So, like, when, when he, like, back in 2003, when he, when he, when he didn't get arrested for, um, for the heroin stuff, his, um, the guy, his, his, his bodyguard, allegedly, who's also married to his cousin and is a relative of his wife, Tipeni, he did go to prison for bringing in heroin for five and a half years in Australia.

And then he came back to Cambodia and came back to Cambodia, became a one-star general again and then got, and then lost it again in 2018 because he couldn't stop setting up like cockfighting rings. And so like these guys are all just like a bit kind of like nuts, but they are also just like so focused on Cambodia and internal in Cambodia because their power is so assured, like, assured there. Like, you know, you have to really, like, the reason why he keeps suing people at the moment in Australia

is because some of the reporting in Australia met the Australians cancelled his visa and he couldn't go back. Actually had some effect. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, not a lot of what we say ends up having an effect on his businesses because he's got too much power. It's just kind of awkward thing in your job

where you realize that you, if you're really good at it, then you're going to be in a lot more danger. But I guess if you're just kind of mediocre or not making a massive difference, then you're going to be allowed to continue to operate right. So we should talk about 5G in the vaccine. We should have a lot less flat.

Yeah, that's fascinating, guys. Thanks so much for joining me today. We'll be in touch because we've talked about some crazy shit in the last few days. Could each of them be an episode? I'm going to turn to this camera and do an outro. Thanks everyone for listening to the show and watching it because now people watch podcasts, which is weird, isn't it?

But yeah, we'll be back next week with another show. And that was fantastic. Cheers, guys. Thanks very much. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava resort and casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.