Cambodia's ACU Says Two Generals Were Paid to Keep a Scam Operation Off the Raid List
Cambodia's Anti-Corruption Unit put out an open letter on June 2 laying out how it says a deputy immigration chief and a deputy Phnom Penh police commissioner took bribes to shield an online scam operation. What prompted it was a Facebook post. Phi Kimsong, wife of one of the charged men, had written that her husband Yat Kosal was an innocent former monk who ran a home coffee shop and drove taxi on the side, and got grabbed delivering a single coffee to a football field while still owing the bank $70,000 to $80,000 on his car and house.
ACU's version runs differently. It says a man called Tony, who ran Morgan James Co. Ltd inside Phnom Penh's Twin Tower, paid Meas Marin $10,000 a month to keep his operation from being inspected or raided, and that Meas Marin pulled in Lt. Gen. Uk Haysela of immigration and Maj. Gen. Sor Samnang of the municipal police. The split, per ACU, was 40 percent to Meas Marin and 60 percent to Haysela, who kept $4,000 and passed $2,000 to Samnang. When inspectors were due at Twin Tower, the three made sure every company got checked except Morgan James. The money moved through a chain ACU says was built to hide it, running from Tony through Meas Marin and the two wives of Samnang and Meas Marin before it reached Haysela.
Meas Marin, a Khmer-American the letter describes as a retired US military officer now holding a brigadier general's rank and an advisory post at the Ministry of National Defense, has fled. Yat Kosal, his assistant since 2023, was sent to collect that first $10,000 from Tony in person. ACU's answer to his wife is that she didn't know what her husband actually did, while he, the court, and the unit do.