Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet wasn’t lying in his recent interview with AFP. Here’s what the news agency quoted him as saying:

“The scam network, what we call the black economy, is destroying our honest economy. It has put a bad reputation on Cambodia,” Hun Manet said. It is harming tourism and investment, which “is the reason why we need to clean this out.”

The Cambodian leader admitted that online scam centers “may produce some direct result to real estate, to some investment, the building, the buying, how to make the centers,” but said that “most of the proceeds do not go into the government of Cambodia.”

He added, “A lot of people were saying that the GDP of Cambodia relies on the scam. No. We rely on pure economies such as tourism, manufacturing, and others.”

In reference to Chen Zhi, the founder and CEO of Prince Group, Hun Manet also said that he and his government “did not know that he was the kingpin” of a sprawling online scamming network. Chen was sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom in October and indicted in the United States for allegedly directing forced-labor scam compounds and money laundering schemes. The U.S. and U.K. seized $15 billion in bitcoin and assets.

Before allegations against Chen were brought forward, the Cambodian government thought he was “just a businessman, contributing to the economy,” Hun Manet claimed. “Whatever the activities, we (did) not know.”

One might quibble with some of his logic. Most of the proceeds of any business or sector do “not go into the government of Cambodia,” so that’s an odd way of framing economic activity. You could ask about the morality of his saying that the “reason” for the “need to clean this out” is because it’s harming tourism and investment, rather than the primary reason being to stop the human trafficking and forced labor, and the torture and abuse documented inside many of the compounds.

But the central thesis of Hun Manet’s anti-mea culpa is that his government knew nothing at all about the activities of politically connected figures like Chen Zhi and his Prince Group.

Let’s be clear, his government was warned. Reports published by Radio Free Asia and The Diplomat starting in 2024 linked Chen Zhi and Prince Group to the cyber-scam industry. Anyone with even a half-deaf ear to the ground in Cambodia knew these allegations. Government officials told me they were aware of the rumors.

Cambodia has been downgraded for money laundering risks and human trafficking for years by foreign governments and international agencies, all allegations that Phnom Penh denied. It also denied public allegations linking government officials and oligarchs to the scam industry.

Yet apparently none of the allegations or warnings about Prince Group reached the top of the hierarchy, and seemingly no one in Cambodian law enforcement thought they might be worth investigating.

Hun Manet’s comments, read as he intended them, can only be a damning indictment of his own government and the country’s entire law enforcement apparatus. His own brother is head of military intelligence.  His own cousin, Hun To, was a director of another company, Huione, that was also sanctioned by the U.S. for links to the scam industry. Chen Zhi was a personal advisor to Hun Manet and his father, Hun Sen, the previous prime minister.

If his ruling party is to be believed, it can detect the treasonous plot of elected opposition MPs who are conspiring with the Americans to launch a “color revolution,” yet it’s incapable of investigating whether one of the country’s largest conglomerates is involved in one of the biggest acts of cybercrime and money laundering globally. Do recall that the U.S. and U.K. seized $15 billion worth of assets from Chen Zhi and his associates.

If Hun Manet isn’t lying, then Phnom Penh surely needs to launch a serious public inquiry to investigate why no law enforcement agency was able to detect this criminality. Shouldn’t some people be held accountable for not investigating the allegations? Maybe Hun Manet didn’t know, but if he isn’t lying, then it has to be someone’s fault that he didn’t know.

Remember, Hun Manet didn’t say his government lacked sufficient evidence to arrest or prosecute Chen Zhi. He said: “we (did) not know.” This is an important distinction. He could have told AFP: We had our suspicions and tried to investigate the allegations, but we lacked the evidence until it was provided by the FBI and other foreign agencies.

That would have been a reasonable comment. That would have suggested that Cambodian law enforcement takes allegations of criminality seriously, but that the government is aware of the limitations law enforcement faces in investigating multinational fraud on such a scale and, therefore, is conscious of the need to improve how the police and other agencies investigate such matters.

But Hun Manet didn’t say this. He said he knew nothing, and his government thought Chen Zhi was “just a businessman, contributing to the economy.”

But isn’t there another implication to this, too? According to Hun Manet, the Cambodian government was unaware that one of the country’s largest conglomerates was involved in epic fraud until it was brought to light by foreign investigators. If Hun Manet isn’t lying, he’s presumably suggesting that Cambodia is helpless to detect serious, organized crime on such a scale within its own borders. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement for a government that stakes so much on national sovereignty and has spent the best part of a decade lambasting the United States for intervening in its affairs.

It also begs the question of what else Hun Manet and his government are ignorant about, as well as the question of why we should think that Cambodian law enforcement can “clean” up a problem that it has apparently been so ignorant about.

All of this or Hun Manet is lying­. It certainly benefits Cambodia to now be seen taking action against the scam industry, which is why Hun Manet gave a rare interview to foreign media. But whatever the rationale, Hun Manet’s I-know-nothing schtick is a rather humiliating admission of gross incompetence and ineptitude. Where does the buck stop?