← The Underworld Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript146 lines
- [00:01]
Sean Williams
All right, remember, the machine knows if you're lying. First statement. Carvana will give you a real offer on your car. All online.
- [00:08]
Nathan Southern
False.
- [00:08]
Sean Williams
True. Actually, you can sell your car in minutes.
- [00:11]
Nathan Southern
False. That's gotta be true again.
- [00:13]
Sean Williams
Carvana will pick up your car from your door. Or you can drop it off at one of their car vending machines.
- [00:17]
Nathan Southern
Sounds too good to be true. So true.
- [00:20]
Sean Williams
Finally caught on. Nice job. Honesty isn't just their policy, it's their entire model. Sell your car today, too. Pickup fees may apply. Tron Aries has arrived. I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate AI soldier.
- [00:36]
Lindsay Kennedy
He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent.
- [00:40]
Nathan Southern
You think you're in control of this? You're not.
- [00:44]
Sean Williams
On October 10th, what are you? My world is coming to destroy yours. But I can help you. The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Ares. Rated PG13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now.
- [01:01]
Lindsay Kennedy
It's 2004 in Melbourne, Australia, and cops are, it finally seems, on to Hunto. 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 Timba, Aussie cops assure, isn't just the only thing Punto is getting into their country. They launch operation Ilipango 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. Hinto's father, Hun Neng, a regional governor in Cambodia, steps in on behalf of his son. Hn to 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. Hnto's targeting, the father adds, is just a, quote, chance thing. But is it? Taifaney, the brother in law, he was actually Hnto's bodyguard and supposedly bought his Air Force rank through connections to, quote, powerful people in Cambodia, according to Aussie investigative reporter. In other words, the Hun family 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. Hunto lives in Melbourne. He's got Aussie residency. But before the cops can swoop, somebody at the Australian embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city, cancels Hyun To's 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 Ilopango scuppered, cops in Australia have no choice but to watch Hunto's star rise even further. As Hun Sen 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 Scambodia. 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 am 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 Phnom 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 Hundo. 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.
- [05:20]
Sean Williams
Thank you for having me.
- [05:22]
Nathan Southern
See you in person. You have a bottom half, it turns out.
- [05:26]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, it's not pretty, but it's there.
- [05:28]
Sean Williams
Well, I think, like, Hunto has just been this constant name and, like, 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 he 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 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 Khmer Rouge insurgency groups, government somewhere kind of in between and they're making money from everything. And then Hunto 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 and like some of the most rural parts of Cambodia. And he would get like luxury timber exports are still a massive thing in Cambodia. Things like Rosewoods is a huge market in China for that. So it's kind of like the bedrock of Cambodia's criminality. And you know, going back to the 90s, there's, there's accusations of Hunto's alleged involvement in quite widespread temper 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 seize drugs, like someone will take it to someone who is allegedly hunt those contacts and he basically just distributes these drugs back out. And then since then it'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, you know, timber trafficking and drugs and this kind of like cowboy stuff to now him being the director of what has been 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 of their activities, Latin American drug carte, North Korean crypto heists. And this guy who's a timber trafficker from, you know, rural Cambodia is now one of directors of the biggest like illegal digital marketplace in the world. So it shows this perfect arc of criminality of Cambodia and kind of where we're at.
- [08:13]
Nathan Southern
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 were kind of like a very extreme, extreme Maoist group that wanted to take the country back to year zero. And Hun Sen was during that time he started off as a child soldier and then he was made like he was head of like the east zone of the country during the Khmer Rouge years in the late 70s and then he defected to Vietnam and as 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 came up through being child soldiers from scrambling around the Khmer Ridge would do a lot of logging to fund their activities and stuff. But then what's kind of funny is that Hun Sen stayed in charge, and then his kids then ended up being your classic Nepo babies. They're all sent off to fancy universities. His son goes to West Point. He's very sort of. He just seems very much the kind of person who you can now introduce to other dignitaries kind of thing. He's like, that kind of background. Whereas Han Sen's brother, Hen Neng, who was then provincial governor of this area, called Kampong Chan, where they were from, he's bringing up his sons. It's still chaos. They're still running around getting in gunfights, getting into loads of trouble, and. Yeah, trafficking timber, allegedly.
- [09:41]
Lindsay Kennedy
We'll have to add a ticker down.
- [09:42]
Nathan Southern
The bottom there and then. Yeah. And then it kind of like, that culminated. Yeah. Like, Nathan was saying, like, there's this massive sting that was being planned in Australia where Hunter was apparently shipping in heroin in shipments 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, Hun Sen. 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 hate, you know. You know how, like, you get these, like, Eastland, like, East End gangsters who kind of seem like they kind of resent the fact that their kids went to private school and now they're kind of fun. 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.
- [10:33]
Sean Williams
Danny Dyer.
- [10:34]
Nathan Southern
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [10:37]
Lindsay Kennedy
You might call the episode that.
- [10:41]
Nathan Southern
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 illegal logging in, like, 2021. And at that time, we were trying to work out, like, where these new logging trails are being built across the borderlines 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 got this concession like on the Thai border to build what we thought at the time was just a big sort of like logging depot and trafficking spot into Thailand. And we went up there and we took all these photos at the 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 realized later when we look back over the photos was the name of the a company owned by Hanto, like on like emblazone 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 where like there's like forced labor of people like doing online scams and like targeting people in China and Europe with like romance scams and stuff. And yeah, so we kind of, it's kind of came full circle.
- [12:01]
Sean Williams
Yeah, yeah, I think you're like done a log investigation in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia. And you see you're expecting to find depots and warehouses where they hold the timber, but then you find kind of half casino looking building with cages on the window and you're like, that stands out. That's a bit weird. And then what it took is 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 at the heart of building this kind of criminal infrastructure that Cambodia has been based on, which is now spread across the region and is now worth 60% of Cambodia's GDP. And the collective trade around Southeast Asia is possibly worth more than the entire drug trades across the world now. So we're talking huge levels of criminality and profit just stemming from what was originally a timber trafficking paradise. Now to the digital crime universe of.
- [12:54]
Lindsay Kennedy
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 SCZs. But you've kind of done the whole, 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, yeah, I mean you Just mentioned some of the figures involved. Like, the scale of this is unreal, Right? It's one of the biggest kind of criminal industries, if not the biggest in the world.
- [13:35]
Nathan Southern
I think that the really. Yeah, the really crazy thing is, like. Yeah, like, Myanmar is like a war zone, right? So you have pockets of, like, it's a huge place, and you have, like, you know, you have different militias who are attached to, like, different scam 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 Laos, where you've got, like, pockets of this that have been basically sold to Chinese gangsters. Was one particular pocket the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, King's 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 Cynicville now, which is like, this place on the coast that became this, like, kind of poster child of, like, what can go wrong when you sort of start licensing casinos en masse. 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, not buildings, but collections. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like little, like, hubs. Yeah, yeah. Like many times. Right. And quite a lot of them. I mean, the Cambodia and Thailand went to war earlier this year, and quite a lot of them were, like, fired at by the Thai side as well. Because a lot of these places, like, target Thai victims.
- [15:02]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, that was nuts because no one would sort of come out and say why these random places that were ostensibly nothing to do with the issue that they were fighting over were suddenly getting bombed.
- [15:13]
Nathan Southern
Right, yeah. So it was kind of nuts because some of these areas are really close to where this contested. The war was meant to be over. This contested area where these temples are in the north 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. 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 100 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 Huntosis.
- [15:46]
Sean Williams
And like so, yeah, like, so Thailand admitted before the conflict, like for months they started releasing all these profiles. Actually they've 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. And you're like actually this is pretty helpful, right? It's like. And there'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 any of the compounds they had except one compound. One casino they had, they said was, was holding weaponry in it, which is also possible because they are all owned by senators, are linked to people who are involved with ruling families. So they could have been holding.
- [16:34]
Nathan Southern
But even then they only admitted that it was a target after someone released a video of them quite clearly firing a rocket straight into it. It's the middle of nowhere. So then they had to be like, oh wait, no, it was holding weapons. That was why we did that before I denied that it was a target.
- [16:46]
Sean Williams
Yeah. And there was no mention of the fact that they blew up this part of this guy. Tree. Tree. P's house. Right. Like, 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, from any of this contested area. So they 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, on like so it. First of all it's not just like the Thai border, Cambodia's border with Vietnam is, has got less coverage but like it's, it's slowly building up. Like these cities are building up. You go there and you're looking at places like I'd say like what felt like when we watched Scenic Ville build up from being like what they always call like a dusty backpacker time. But I mean it was full of sex bats, but it's pretty crime. Yeah, it wasn't that idyllic. Right. But it's pretty good to Write in a byline, you know and like that scale of that city building is 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. Looks like people are already trapped inside. They're building along the Vietnam border, building along the Thai border. So you know, both these countries are starting to get a bit like right, what are you doing? Like you set up these massive centers of like global criminality right on our border. And now the T, 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 to all these crazy states that are on their border. But then you got to ask like, well like okay, one of your borders is in the site. We'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 that the military are getting like a lot of their funding comes from that. So kind of happy to keep this low level conflict kind of brewing. And then there's a lot of more attacks actually during the conflict with Cambodia and the south. And there are other borders are Laos where the Going Triangle Special Economic Zone is. And like all of the access to that is for 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 most likely scams. And we've seen people get trafficked out of the Golden Triangle and said to Thai authorities like, 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? Like that doesn't, that doesn't go anywhere. You can phone it and it's just empty. And then there are other borders obviously like with Myanmar which is the hub of these, the scam operations and like places like Shaykoko KK park, which been loads of coverage on. But what Thailand's always done is had a bit of an arrangement with I think the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone and those places in Myanmar on their border was like we 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 got a deal. Right? And then they've continued doing that. But then what's what's happened is like, yeah, golden triangle special 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.
- [19:42]
Lindsay Kennedy
Like, yeah, my photographer nearly got killed by a tiger.
- [19:47]
Podcast Advertiser
Guys, let's talk razors. House of Atlas. I mean, you know me, I'm a man of luxury and taste, and I am incredibly vain. I want to look as good as possible. And that is where these Atlas razors come in. I mean, just, just look at this thing. Dude, 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 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 fight 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. Smells incredible. They all feel great. You're gonna smell amazing, too. And they're now available at Target stores nationwide. You might've 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 gonna rave about Atlas. And now for a limited time, they're offering 20% off site wide plus free shipping@houseofatlas.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 HouseOfAtlas.com today. Trust me, you'll love it as much as I did.
- [21:26]
Lindsay Kennedy
I think I mentioned this on the show before. We're up one more.
- [21:31]
Podcast Advertiser
If you're obsessed with true crime, cults or conspiracy theories, I've got the perfect show for you. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a new weekly podcast from crime house and Pave Studios that dives into the darkest corners of human behavior. Every Wednesday, we uncover the true story stories behind the world's most shocking crimes, deadly ideologies and secret plots. From mass suicides and political assassinations to secret government experiments and UFO cults. You'll hear about infamous cases like Jonestown and jfk, as well as hidden horrors like the Octopus Murders and Starvation Heights. But remember, these aren't just stories. These are real people, real advice events and very real consequences. So if you love mystery, madness, and diving deep into the world's most unbelievable true stories, you won't want to miss this. Follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes now wherever you get your podcasts. And for ad free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [22:44]
Lindsay Kennedy
Jan Marsalek was a model of German corporate success.
- [22:47]
Sean Williams
It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself.
- [22:58]
Lindsay Kennedy
But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him?
- [23:01]
Sean Williams
His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong.
- [23:15]
Nathan Southern
I don't know if they followed me to my home.
- [23:17]
Sean Williams
It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.
- [23:29]
Lindsay Kennedy
Listen to Hot agent of Chaos wherever you get your podcasts. One of the nights that we were there, we'd gone around, we're like, I want to find the tigers. They got to be around here somewhere. Big cages full of tigers walk through old football pitch. There's loads of kids playing and sort of behind a bunch of scrub land hidden by palm trees, there are giant cages full of, I don't know, like 30 tigers, something like this. 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.
- [24:21]
Nathan Southern
Oh my God.
- [24:21]
Lindsay Kennedy
And he was taking a picture of one and it leapt through the. Through the bars of the cage, grabbed him and tried to drag him in.
- [24:28]
Sean Williams
And he's like, he doesn't want to go over you guys in case he gets in trouble at night. He's like, ok, I'll do the early morning shit.
- [24:35]
Lindsay Kennedy
But yeah, he's like, if I'd fallen forward, I would have been dead. So that was, that was fun for him. So, so that's the story, though.
- [24:42]
Sean Williams
Yeah, that. That mental place. And when we were there, I was like, I didn't almost get killed by a tiger, but it was. It was mental in its own ways. But, like, that was 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 kingdom's golden triangle, especially. Right. So in scenario we've got into, like, some of the main compounds have been briefly raided, then they're filled up again a few weeks or months. And you go in and they've got the adverts for wildlife, like, there. We know that some of the compounds are. Got tigers and lions and the cages just for fun, for the gangsters, like, to play with or, you know, just be with or whatever. 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.
- [25:36]
Lindsay Kennedy
It's.
- [25:37]
Sean Williams
It's in Laos where, like, like, in. Was it. I mean, two years ago now, there was like in. In Central Phnom Penh and like, like, kind of where all the hipster bars are and a lot of the expats kind of hang out and like, charity workers, NGOs. There was a line walking around at, like, you know, middle of the day, and people are like, is that a big cat or is that a lion? Like, no, that. That. That's a lion. That's. Yeah. And there's some Chinese. Chinese billionaire gangster of a purple Lamborghini. And so then they send us.
- [26:03]
Nathan Southern
Apparently, like, someone was taking the rubbish out and didn't notice that the lion had followed them out.
- [26:09]
Sean Williams
Yeah. And then so this NGO goes and, like, kind of seizes the lion and brings it to our reserve. And then the guy's like, yeah, okay, it's my lion. That might be illegal, but I love him. And me and my friends.
- [26:21]
Lindsay Kennedy
The emotional support lion.
- [26:23]
Sean Williams
Yeah, pretty much, yeah. He's got a French pit bull, like terrier, like a little some mut mix thing. And he was like this tiny little dog, and he was like, look me, the little French guy and. And the tiger, the lion, sorry, are all like, you know, we're all mates. Like, we're all really, really close. And they're like, I'll prove it. And they go into the cage at this reserve and he walks in with the tiny dog and was like, that tiny dog's gonna get eaten. Like, yeah. But they walk up and the line's like, hey. And gives them, like, a big hug and, like, is, like, nuzzling with the tiny dog. Then Hun Sen comes out, who's still the prime minister 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.
- [27:07]
Nathan Southern
But even more, I'd have made him kiss it.
- [27:10]
Lindsay Kennedy
Prove it.
- [27:10]
Nathan Southern
But also, like, all of these, like, wildlife trafficking charities have, like, spent years and years and years like, trying to get the law changed so you can't keep exotic pets. And they've made loads of really good progress. And then Huntertown just went, oh, you know what? Like, maybe. Maybe people should be allowed to have pets like that. Like, you know, maybe. And 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 wildlife trafficking. But also, we've been trying to get 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, Nathan was 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. And we were like, what's happening? Second line. I was like, you had one job.
- [27:56]
Lindsay Kennedy
Which was like, keeping this a secret satisfies emotional needs.
- [28:02]
Sean Williams
And then like, yeah, the second line, we don't want to tell journalists about it. It's like, who do you think I am? Like, I. I told you what this was. And then. 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 Kerry. We got some land. Like, it's not. Say it's not, you know, fair to keep them in a prom pen 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, like, yeah, like, so Cambodia is becoming, like, just basically one massive golden triangle. Especially economics. Anything does go.
- [28:28]
Nathan Southern
Yes, but, like, 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. That's also kind of like a logging route into Thailand. That, that, that whole area has now been like sanctioned by like the US twice now in different ways. And, but the companies that he's involved in, like the Heng He 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 Hanzo, 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 it's kind of, it's insane. And when we were there like last month I think we went to go to, we went to Beavette. We were looking at the scale of it and how much bigger it's getting and, and I was looking because there's people like on TikTok trying to recruit more people to come and work for these, on 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. 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 like the middle of the night and it was this entire, 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.
- [30:12]
Sean Williams
That place like half a kilometer from the 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, like so much ribs it's there. It's their cross border financing of of everything. And yeah, and Hunter is kind of like at the heart of. Of so, so much of this. And he just. He just won't get sanctions. So it makes like. I mean, it's nice being able to do this podcast. For some reason we think we're not going to get sued, but like, allegedly, like, allegedly at the heart of every criminal operation. Yeah. Just like me. I, like, hope he doesn't subscribe to your Patreon.
- [30:56]
Lindsay Kennedy
Business tips.
- [30:57]
Nathan Southern
Yeah.
- [30:57]
Sean Williams
And yeah, like, I mean, even like, yeah, when, when, when y on. Which is like the. Yeah, the. 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 director of IT and still doesn't get sanctioned. He's director of all of these other companies that have been sanctions. He's around all of it. The fact that when that trafficking with heroin and timber case came up in 2003, 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, listen, maybe don't go to Australia right now. You may get arrested for heroin smuggling. And he denies all charges.
- [31:38]
Nathan Southern
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 that 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 official report was released by the government talking about how they were dividing that they were dividing Australia into seven areas and like appointing a different elite, like kind of like Cambodian, like government elite in each one of these areas to be like, yeah, like to be like the point of contact who would. Then the idea was meant to be, oh, you know, we're gonna try and like, be a kind of cultural center point for Cambodian people in that area. And we're gonna like, hold banquets and we're gonna like. But what. What Cambodian. The Cambodia diaspora was saying in Australia is 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, consent. Even though we're Australian, we're getting threatened in our home, like, like, in our homes. And they were like, Australian senators, like, senators, lawmakers worthy of, like, like going, like, saying in like government hearings in Australia, we're really concerned that the, like, the Cambodian elites are here threatening people in Australian soil and, like, nothing was done about it.
- [33:08]
Sean Williams
So it's this like multilayer protection. So, like, yeah, 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 like, Hunto was simultaneously suing the Australian owned by Rupert Murdoch and Al Jazeera in the same year. So to sue the Qatari government and Rupert Murdoch at the same time is like, is pretty bold, right? And at the same time I've got this thing where no one, even in other countries are going to talk about 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.
- [33:47]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, similar to.
- [33:48]
Nathan Southern
It's really similar. Yeah.
- [33:49]
Sean Williams
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 Asian country. And they're going around threatening in Australia, but also evidence of it, you know, states as well. And 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 laundering like hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into their casinos, their property markets. And then that means there's no push for Australians to be like, well, 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 would have to look at asset seizures. And then that's court cases, and he loves a court case. So you just brought into all these legal disputes, so it just becomes too complicated. And then he just kind of. He doesn't slip through the cracks. Everyone is screaming quietly, why are we not sanctioning this guy with no system free, he's trying to smuggle heroin 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 now he runs like the biggest money laundering platform in the world ever and he's still not getting sanctioned.
- [35:02]
Nathan Southern
Yeah, the US says that his platform moved about, I think it was $4 billion in illegal proceeds. I think it was, which is completely insane. But also Transparency International came out last year and said that just through legal means, half a billion dollars a year is going from Cambodia to Australia and compared to doesn't have a big economy. Right. And that's just, 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.
- [35:44]
Lindsay Kennedy
You can understand, 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, the country and it's sort of wielding extraordinary power through this.
- [36:00]
Nathan Southern
Yes, Cambodia's such an interesting case because everyone always thinks they can control it. Like, you know, like China thought that it would basically be their kind of vassal state the way that Laos has been, to be honest. Like, and America always thinks they can sort of tell Cambodia what to do. Like everyone always thinks Cambodia is a sill country. Like they, you know, 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. That Khun Sen is a terrifying person. He is like actually a kind of a political genius. He's managed to play off some of the, all of the major powers against each other for years and years and years and get his own way and say, say 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, this kind of central family and this kind of like small group of elites have amassed 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 aren't, you know, there's only so much you can do with mining and like there's not guns from the war. You know, all the natural resources are disappearing. They basically figured out that, oh wait, we can become, we can, 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. 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, 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, like platforms that are all like now used to. 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, like one of the hearts of kind of like illicit funds flowing through the world, which is just like, kind of incredible to watch.
- [37:45]
Lindsay Kennedy
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.
- [38:02]
Sean Williams
So it used to be heroin, right? And Cambodia was accused of being like a narco state in the 90s, right. And like, at that time, we're like, like, it wasn't just temper, it was guns from the war, but it was moving a lot of drugs through 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 seemed to end up in the pockets of elites, politicians, military officers. And then they were moving that out. So heroin was a big thing for a long time. But then as global drug markets changed, that had a big impact on that trade in Cambodia. So much like the rest of Southeast Asia, Cambodia shifted to meth. And like, when like the world kind of like we know that Myanmar is the world's biggest producer of methamphetamine. And the market for that is actually worth more than the like, Latin American cocaine trade is absolutely enormous. But Cambodia has quietly become quite a massive producer now of methamphetamine as well. I think like UNODC were two or three years ago, we're doing like one, like assisting on one raid in Phnom Penh for a meth factory and accidentally found like three more that day. And it's everywhere. And so it's not just. So it's 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 drugs, drug cartels. And then as those connections are being made, then to. 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 scenario that 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 is getting 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 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 to organize crimes. You've got the Russian mafia, you've got Japanese Yakuza ish guys, you've got Chinese triads, you've got some dodgy Americans, you've got all of these organized train groups. But they're all coming in and they're all working together.
- [40:25]
Nathan Southern
The thing is, there are meth labs all over the place. They turn up now and again and get sort of uncovered by accident. But they, um. But the value of the drug, it's like one of the few places in the world where the value of the drug trade, even though it's huge, is 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 just like, well, people, I guess, but you don't have to physically move anything out of your compound. So I think I just figured out they could make so much more money at. Of this as well.
- [41:00]
Sean Williams
And for some ridiculous reason, like, the Americans really only care about drugs. And so it means that like, oh, if you're, if you're caught like moving a lot of them, they're quite good at keeping it a bit quieter than what Myanmar is doing. But then you've got Hunto 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 sanctions or says we need to do something about this, this is a.
- [41:28]
Nathan Southern
Real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers.
- [41:33]
Sean Williams
We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Kath and Andrew.
- [41:39]
Nathan Southern
I got to sit in the driver's seat.
- [41:40]
Sean Williams
I grew up in an aviation family, and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future.
- [41:51]
Nathan Southern
It felt like I was the captain.
- [41:52]
Sean Williams
Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way.
- [41:57]
Nathan Southern
Introducing ivf the Kindbody Story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. It grew like a tech startup. While Kindbody did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.
- [42:16]
Sean Williams
You think you're finally like in the right hand. You're just not.
- [42:20]
Nathan Southern
Listen to IVF Disrupted the Kind Body Story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [42:28]
Podcast Advertiser
Everytown has a dark side. This is Andrew Fitzgerald from the Everytown podcast, where every single week we dive into insane and mysterious true crime stories, most of which you've never heard of. Stories like the bizarre disappearance of Tyler D. Davis in Columbus, Ohio. A 29 year old father trying to find his way back to his hotel when he disappeared and was never heard from again. And Elizabeth Shoaff from Lugoff, South Carolina, who was abducted from her driveway by a madman and taken to his underground bunker in the woods. We give you all the details you're interested in hearing about without any fluff or fillers because ain't nobody got time for that cover up everything from psychopaths to poltergeist. So go check out the Everytown podcast because every town, no matter how nice it may seem, has a dark side.
- [43:21]
Sean Williams
Really going for it. They're not really, really cracking down on it because with drugs, it's still seen as this massive win. Like, look, we seized this many kilos and then we can do a photo op. And if we say we did it in the lawless Golden Triangle area, or we could mix like, I mean, they're obviously, they're designating cartel groups now as terrorists, right? So it's like enemy number one. But actually the loss to American economy and to people's lives, I would say is 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 capital outflow out of the US economy, but also just taking regular people's entire pensions, their entire incomes, everything that they're completely broken, they're completely decimated. And then there's so much focus on this product that, I mean, essentially people do want, right. 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 it's like, 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, that they can have just enough leverage to do the odd crackdown to keep China happy or to maybe keep America happy. And then going back to Hun Sen's this amazing political operator, he somehow has a war with Thailand and comes out in. Both China and America are both like sucking up to Hun Sen. They're both like, we'll give you more military cooperation, more ket, more planes. We'll do whatever you want. And Hun Sen's like, oh yeah, maybe we'll rename a road Donald Trump Road.
- [45:03]
Nathan Southern
Fame to win the Nobel Prize, Peace Prize and stuff. And that was enough just to get them completely on site and get so much slack up for them. It's like unbelievable.
- [45:09]
Sean Williams
And the guy who called for him to get a Nobel Peace Prize originally is 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 Belt and Roads Initiative investment into Cambodia that has also been linked to every bit of criminality from timber smuggling to the scam trade. So building insanely developed and incredible roads through landmine filled mountains to what is a town that was just used for.
- [45:45]
Nathan Southern
Yeah, the one we were talking about where this guy, specifically this one that got fired into that has this casino with Hunter's branding on it. 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 Senecville, 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 insanely complicated road that just goes up through the mountains through these like 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 see.
- [46:27]
Sean Williams
Logging carts and like Triad minivans.
- [46:30]
Nathan Southern
And it's insane.
- [46:30]
Sean Williams
You know, they could have built like a lovely road to Siem Reap, which they did develop, but it wasn't number two. Right. And that would be like tourists going from Broad Ben Siem Reap. No, no, no, no. To that weird little logging town that turns out to now be a scam hub. And so they're like this guy is directly directing all of these investments into building is enormous criminal infrastructure basically. And he is the. There's 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 tell you what it would be great for is scam hubs, right. It's been five years. Starlink's been using 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 all of their soft power interests. But no one's connecting that because the Americans like, oh, there's money to be made. I know he's complimenting Donald Trump the.
- [47:36]
Lindsay Kennedy
BRI for anyone who 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?
- [47:45]
Nathan Southern
Yeah.
- [47:46]
Lindsay Kennedy
All over the world, anywhere from Romania to like the Pacific islands and in Southeast Asia. It's everywhere, right. It's basically every giant public works is pretty much going to have Chinese PRI money in it.
- [48:01]
Nathan Southern
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 that doesn't get, it kind of gets left out a lot is that China was having like massive problems economically at home. So that the way the bra works is they basically say we'll 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.
- [48:33]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, those like Chinese state railway companies and like cement works, they're now worth like hundreds of billions of dollars, right?
- [48:41]
Nathan Southern
Yeah, yeah, 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 gangsters to build these scam compounds and stuff. So like China made quite a lot of money ultimately because they're state owned enterprises out of these places being built, even if they weren't like directing them in the first place.
- [48:58]
Lindsay Kennedy
And that's kind of not even if you wander into the debt trap theories.
- [49:02]
Nathan Southern
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [49:03]
Sean Williams
That's just a mafia connection.
- [49:05]
Nathan Southern
But yeah, yeah.
- [49:07]
Lindsay Kennedy
How, how closely are those sort of BRI projects then in Cambodia and elsewhere in the region then are they like directly linked to Chinese organized criminal groups?
- [49:16]
Sean Williams
Well, well, yeah, I mean like.
- [49:19]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, to do another. Allegedly.
- [49:20]
Sean Williams
Yeah.
- [49:22]
Nathan Southern
This isn't even allegedly Chinese. So it's kind of like. We call it like the shadow BRI basically. Right. Where you have your real BRI projects and then you have. China doesn't release an official list of what's a BRI project as well, which makes it much more confusing. So you have all the official stuff. Stuff. And then you have all the gangsters following them around where the new places are, sort of making use of the fact there's new roads and ports and things that make it easier as well. But also just following around where these areas are and building these things like scam compounds and casinos, making out their part of the bra, even when they're not hiring the same companies who are state owned to build them. So it's 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, we're evil. You know, we're like, evil. We're gonna like fill the place with organized crime, I don't think. But, but they do kind of follow the BRI around and set up. And that's what's happened in Cambodia and Myanmar in places.
- [50:17]
Sean Williams
Then there, there are groups that like. And we've spoken before about the Hongmen, right. And then there's.
- [50:22]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, people can. What was it like two or three years ago we did a show that was about that.
- [50:26]
Sean Williams
Yeah, yeah. And then seriously, a kind of quick recap about this one. Cat Koi, also known as Broken Tooth, basically the head of the 14K Triads in Macau, arrested during a screening of his own film in the middle of a triad war he initiated. And then does, I think 14 years in prison, gets out in 2012 and says to the government, I am no longer the head of the triads.
- [50:46]
Nathan Southern
By that point, Macau had switched back from 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.
- [50:52]
Sean Williams
Yeah, definitely not in the mafia. Totally not. Started the Honking Men 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, jump on in. The Chinese government needs the help of this gangster that's been in prison for 12 years to 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, in the military, like at the opening of his Hongmen Association. The Hongmen become 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 with Taiwan, if you look at any of them, and in seemingly unimportant countries like Belize or Palau, Palau is a 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 SCZ 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 Hongmen 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 and casinos all around this area where the US have their military base. So there's like a direct connection between Chinese soft power, Chinese hard power and raising a shitload of capital through this organized crime infrastructure. They have. And it does go global. The Chinese are involved. Chinese organized crime have become massive players. And obviously fentanyl in the U.S. you guys did a great show about the weeds industry in the US Heroin moving through Central Asia, obviously Myanmar and Cambodia. Meth trade. 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 Huion, which is this digital marketplace. Yeah. And that's there just. I mean, this isn't like some really shady, like, dark net. Like you'd need to really know what you're doing if find a way into the spion. Right.
- [53:37]
Nathan Southern
I've got a QR code so you can pay. Pay for stuff in like, in like grocery stores and stuff in like.
- [53:41]
Lindsay Kennedy
Okay. So it's like a full customer facing like.
- [53:44]
Nathan Southern
Yeah.
- [53:46]
Sean Williams
Adverts in the airport and on the bridges on the way to Scenicville for. For it. And then when they got sanctioned, they just changed it to like HP or like a different variation. Then the new. 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, like, transactions are done for these telegram pages on wyon's website. So you click on the telegram and then you. 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. For some scams in Myanmar. I'm like, yeah, I got some Pakistanis like, oh, I'm looking to buy like some money laundering services. And sometimes they're 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. Has anyone got cash into convincing to crypto? All of that's just done on these pages that you can find in minutes.
- [54:33]
Nathan Southern
So like. Yeah. So Whyon had like three sort of three parts to it. Right? So it had like the payment platform, which is like, anyone can sign up and have a. And like, and be. And use that really. And then it had this like escrow service thing, which is what Nate's talking about, where basically you would. One person would say, I've made this payment. It was normally using one pay. And then someone else would say, and then like, okay, I've received it. And it basically was like, like a way of proving that payments had been made. So it was kind of 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 then they also started their own, like, crypto platform, which is like completely proprietary. So, like, so like no one else can ever, like, you know, regulate it. So they were just like three parts to it, basically. It's still going. Yeah.
- [55:19]
Lindsay Kennedy
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?
- [55:29]
Nathan Southern
Yeah, Well, I mean, I think what's so scary about this is like, it's not only is it like. I think that I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are, but the value of it's bigger than Silk Road 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 of like payment ecosystem.
- [55:48]
Lindsay Kennedy
So the criminal economy has become the economy. Yeah, exactly like you were just saying with the scams and everything as well.
- [55:53]
Nathan Southern
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 in. Like, it's so hard to actually contain that. And yeah, it's like. Yeah, it's completely nuts. Like the. The. So I mean, the guy. So Hunter, like, he owns. He founded like Y on, 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 sanctions decisions from the US they specifically named 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. It's part of the same. Well, I think it's because 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 nephew of Hun Sen, cousin of current Prime Minister. It would just be such a massive diplomatic thing for them actually target him. And at the moment Australia is like massively trying to like, what has been like getting way more things like like gold mining contracts and stuff in Cambodia. And like, you know, that's going through Hunto as well. Well, he owns a lot of those areas, I think.
- [57:07]
Sean Williams
Yeah, I mean, he Was there was an accusation of, like, from a Cambodian, like, business tycoon, saying that this all started because the accused hunto 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, hunto just stole the $9 million last year. And then. Then he came out on Facebook and said, like. And it, like, started releasing these, like, insane statements saying this is, like, all a criminal government and, like, Hunto is. Is more powerful. Powerful than the criminal justice system and the courts, and Cambodia won't stand for this. But then. Well, he was then issued a red nose by Interpol from the Cambodian government.
- [57:56]
Nathan Southern
Nuts, right? So this guy. This guy, he, like. Because he's also like, an. It's called Oknya. 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. Runs off to Russia. He's like, takes all these photos of himself, like, with like. Like, Russia and flags all over, like, in, like, military uniform, writes this kind of, like, slightly unhinged, like, well, rants all over Facebook and stuff. Because these guys still use Facebook, right? They're that generation. And about, like, how this is, like, you know, Hunter is, like, the biggest gangster, and, like, you know, he runs all these scam places and blah, 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.
- [58:44]
Sean Williams
Facebook page is still up in the last few posts are like, oh, Cambodia won't stand for this criminality. And we're like, oh, buddy, it's like, you're not rotten in Cambodian prison because of the. Yeah, this Facebook beef that you started with Hunto, and that just shows, like, the. 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 the Facebook argument, and then the guy ends up getting extradited from Russia. So, like, his power is just insane.
- [59:15]
Lindsay Kennedy
Yeah, yeah.
- [59:15]
Sean Williams
And the whole world knows who he is. And he still refuses the sanction, still refuses to arrest them. And still just allows him to operate these criminal industries that are like eviscerating the economies of Australia, European Union, uk, us, Canada. But no one will actually go after him because he's intertwined himself so much within the economy, 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 like going too far. Like it's seen as if you go after Hun Sen's nephew then, 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 insignificant country and has been playing China and the US off against each other to the point that both, 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 like fighting against each other to like build more relationship with Cambodia. And the way that Hun Sense played that is just absolutely incredible. Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are like, basically he's like puppeting them. This is same time that the U.S. announces these new, these new sanctions. The U.S. embassy is in Scenicville, like not far from one of the biggest known slave trafficking compounds like the Kaibo complex in Autres. And the U.S. embassy is planting a tree with the Cambodian government near that place. And it's not to say the US embassies like directly like, like doing anything particularly wrong. They're just doing their job of like 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.
- [61:11]
Lindsay Kennedy
It's, it's, it's, it's insane. And actually one thing that was really interesting, that was in your foreign policy piece that you released, we'll stick it on the show now, was how the, the Hun family like just has to basically stay like elitely powerful, right? Otherwise the whole house of cards falls apart. Could you tell us about how that power system works? Because it's kind of, it's all predicated on their gatekeeping, right?
- [61:37]
Nathan Southern
Yeah. So it's kind of like, it's called like the patronage system. And I mean different, different countries have like, like different variations on this, right? But in, in Cambodia it's just like so intense. So basically you can't get anything done in Cambodia at scale, you can't own any big business or anything unless you normally have to sort of buy this oknya 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 favorite of the government and they should, they should basically green light your stuff.
- [62:16]
Podcast Advertiser
This is Andrew from the Scary Mysteries podcast, where every single week we dive into insane and creepy true crime compilations. On Mondays and on Wednesdays, we have our twisted news episodes where we get you up to speed on the most terrifying and strange news stories currently happening all around the world. We're covering the topics you want to hear about. Missing persons killers, you, UFOs and more. Best of all, we don't waste your time with any fluff or fillers. Just stray to the true crime details. So go check out the Scary Mysteries podcast. I'll see you there.
- [62:52]
Sean Williams
I'm Richard Sarett. Join me on Strange Planet for in depth conversations with the world's top paranormal investigators, Alien abductees, Bigfoot trackers, monster hunters, time travelers, alternative archaeologists, remote viewers, and more. As I was on the way to Area 51, I was stopping on the side of the road and just taking measurements, and I found this one spot where time slowed down by a fraction of a second. It's not supposed to do that. From the two big categories, animal mutilations and human abductions, you have to conclude.
- [63:24]
Nathan Southern
That genetic material is being harvested.
- [63:27]
Sean Williams
Well, I reached for a rifle and I turned and looked and it was already moving and it was descending the bluff. There's no way any human could have went down it. It was probably a 75 degree angle straight down, almost. On Richard Sarat's Strange Planet, we're redefining reality. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts, do not go any further. Turn around, go home. Are you tired of the mainstream media's coverage of the NBA? You ever wonder about what they're hiding? The stories that don't f the agenda? You want the truth? Do you think you can handle it? Welcome to Basketball Illuminati. I'm Tom Haberstrom. And I'm Amin El Hassan. With over two decades of experience navigating the shadowy depths of the NBA, we'll peel back the curtain and show you how the hidden cabal really operates. Are you ready to be enlightened, Basketball Illuminati? Podcast Join the illumination and keep your third eye open.
- [64:29]
Nathan Southern
So it is quite so. But that you have to do that. But then you also have to have, 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 businesses or like 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, and you have to have political like influence as well. So you basically have to have political influence. You have to have like the, you have to have personal wealth and an oknya position or someone who is an oknya on your side and you have to have someone in the security forces. And what happens 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 to the top. Or, and, or they pay for the, 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 chain to people at the top and in return they have to kind of give you protection. So 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 be shut down. Right? So it'll, 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 center 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 businesses going into chaos.
- [66:07]
Sean Williams
And this goes, this goes back to the post war Cambodia when I mean like Cambodia is like, I mean despite the amount of Rolls Royces 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 by that logic still be a place with conflict 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.
- [66:54]
Nathan Southern
This year when they were literally at war.
- [66:55]
Sean Williams
But yeah, yeah, yeah, people were still saying thank you, peace. And I'm like, I'm not sure if they've 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 peace. And. But like when the war was ending, like the original war, not the recent war, the, the country to actually consolidate control over this place was going to be really, really difficult. For Hun Sen to not have someone attempt a coup every few months was going to be incredibly, 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 governor or tycoon was given a license to basically go and do certain illegal activity. And a lot of that at the time was logged in logging. So you are out in a place like Kokong and you can run the legal 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, 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. 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 Hunto being, 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, they could get the SEC built, they could, they could build the computer pounds, 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 this, 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 less 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, 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, the Japanese, 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.
- [69:43]
Nathan Southern
And it really suits foreign, especially Chinese investors. But foreign investors generally want stability, right? So working with democratic countries, sometimes if you're investing billions into that country, you're 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 like, works great for them because even if you have to pay quite substantial bribes to get it, pay to play, at least you know what you're dealing with. Right. You know, it's not, 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.
- [70:21]
Lindsay Kennedy
I guess a final question on this guy is, is how are you going to go back to Ben on the camera instead of this stuff about the most powerful gangster in the country?
- [70:29]
Nathan Southern
Well, yeah, like allegedly, yeah, businessmen.
- [70:33]
Sean Williams
Good lies.
- [70:34]
Nathan Southern
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, yeah, they've never really stopped. He's never actually completely stopped being a bit of a. He can't quite get the gangster stuff out of his system. So like when, when he, like back in 2003, when he, when he didn't get arrested for, for the heroin stuff, his, the guy, his, his bodyguard, allegedly, who's also married to his cousin and is a relative of his wife, Taipani. 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 kicked and then lost it again in 2018 because he could, 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 like assured there. Like, you know, you have to, 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 meant the Australians canceled his visa and he couldn't go back.
- [71:43]
Lindsay Kennedy
Actually had some effect.
- [71:45]
Nathan Southern
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.
- [71:53]
Sean Williams
It's 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?
- [72:09]
Lindsay Kennedy
So we should talk about 5G in the future vaccine. 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. Each of them be an episode. I'm gonna 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 yeah, it was fantastic. Cheers, guys.
- [73:02]
Nathan Southern
Sam.
- [73:53]
Sean Williams
Experian is your big financial friend, helping you explore credit card offers with confidence. Some cards are labeled no ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. See experian.com for details. Applying for cards labeled no ding decline won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved.