2025-11-26
5 分钟The Economist.
Hello, this is Rosie Bloor, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
Welcome to Editors Pics.
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A string of scandals across Southeast Asia is exposing official complicity in vast scam networks,
often operated by Chinese triad and other criminal groups, and involving trafficked workers.
Across the region,
tens of thousands of people toil inside buildings surrounded by barbed wire and security cameras,
defrauding Americans,
Europeans and others in an industry that's estimated to steal over $500 billion a year from victims worldwide.
Last month, Thailand's Deputy Finance Minister, Warrapat Tanawong,
resigned after allegations surfaced linking him to scam networks in Cambodia.
The veteran banker lasted just 33 days in office.
He quit after whale hunting, an investigative journalism outlet in London,
alleged that his wife had received $3 million in cryptocurrency from a Chinese Cambodian criminal network.
He denies all allegations, calling them a smear campaign.
As it happens, his boss, the finance minister,
had appointed him to lead the country's campaign to track money flows from scam centres.
Nowhere is the scam industry more deeply enmeshed with political and business elites than in Cambodia.