UK and Cambodia Sign Deal to Dismantle Online Scam Networks

The UK and Cambodia are signing a new agreement to deepen cooperation against the criminal networks behind online scam centres, as Lord Hanson, the Home Office minister of state, visits Phnom Penh this week. He is attending the International Conference on Combating Online Scams, running from 22 to 24 September, where he will meet Cambodian government counterparts, UN agencies and independent journalists whose reporting helped build the international evidence base against scam operations.

The visit is Lord Hanson's first to Cambodia and follows a trip by the Foreign Office minister for the Indo-Pacific, Baroness Winterton, in August 2026. It comes as governments across the region, including the US, Australia and Singapore, gather this week to discuss how to turn cooperation on scam networks into concrete results for victims.

Inside the New UK-Cambodia Intelligence Sharing Deal

The Memorandum of Understanding builds on what the Home Office describes as an already longstanding partnership between the two countries. According to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the agreement will support closer intelligence sharing, joint financial and digital investigations, and stronger protections for victims of trafficking linked to scam operations.

That last point matters because online scam centres in Southeast Asia are not simply staffed by willing fraudsters. Reporting cited by the UK government, including from independent journalists Lord Hanson is due to meet during his visit, has documented cases where trafficked and coerced workers are forced to run scams against their will. The new agreement frames victim protection for those trafficked workers as central to the UK's approach, alongside the more familiar goal of protecting the British public from being defrauded.

Cambodia's own response has moved quickly over the past year. The Home Office says the country has introduced new legislation, taken sustained enforcement action, and created a dedicated national commission to lead its response to scam operations. The UK's position, as set out by the Foreign Office, is that it wants to stand alongside that effort rather than simply direct it from outside.

The £125 Million Prince Group Sanctions Explained

The Cambodia agreement does not arrive in isolation. On 14 October 2025, the UK and US jointly sanctioned the Prince Group, its chairman Chen Zhi, and related entities including Jin Bei Group, Golden Fortune Resorts World and Byex Exchange, for their alleged role in operating scam centres across Southeast Asia. Those sanctions froze UK based assets worth more than £125 million, including a £12 million mansion in north London and a £100 million office building in the City of London.

Those asset freezes give a sense of the scale of money the government believes has flowed from overseas scam operations into UK property and finance. The Cambodia agreement, alongside the earlier sanctions, forms part of what the Foreign Office describes as a growing wave of international action to disrupt the criminal networks behind online fraud, which the government says affects citizens across the world, including in the UK.

Operation Shadow Storm, The UK's Wider Fraud Fighting Push

The UK already backs the INTERPOL Global Fraud Taskforce, known as Operation Shadow Storm, a UK-INTERPOL initiative focused initially on large scale scam compounds in Southeast Asia. The Foreign Office describes the Cambodia visit as part of a wider effort to deepen fraud fighting partnerships across the Indo-Pacific through that taskforce, rather than a standalone initiative.

Lord Hanson, Minister of State for the Home Office, said fraud was "a truly global threat, which leaves a devastating human impact in its wake," pointing to both defrauded victims who lose savings built over a lifetime and trafficked victims who lose their freedom. He said no country could tackle the threat alone, and credited Cambodia with showing "determination in confronting the criminal networks operating from within its borders." He added that the agreement was "about building something practical and lasting, sharing intelligence, tracing dirty money, and above all protecting the people, on every side, who are harmed by this crime."

The immediate next step is the conference itself, running until 24 September, where the UK will sit alongside partners including the US, Australia and Singapore to discuss turning shared intelligence into action against scam networks. The Foreign Office has not set out a public timetable for when the new Memorandum of Understanding will begin producing joint investigations or further asset freezes.

For UK residents, the practical link is likely to be indirect for now, further sanctions, asset seizures or arrests connected to scam networks operating from Southeast Asia, building on the pattern already set by the Prince Group case. The government's broader message is that this agreement is meant to be a lasting one, not a single diplomatic gesture, with cooperation expected to continue through the INTERPOL taskforce well beyond this week's conference.