"Sinaloa Cartel Caught Laundering Money with Cryptocurrency in Cambodia"

Mexico's notorious and largest drug organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, has been caught laundering money using cryptocurrency in Cambodia.

According to the AP reported on the 22nd local time, Meas Vyrith, secretary-general of Cambodia's National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD), stated that about 7 million dollars (approx. 9.72 billion won) worth of cryptocurrency linked to the Sinaloa Cartel has been seized within the country.

According to Secretary-General Vyrith, Cambodian anti-drug police cooperated with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to raid four locations in the capital Phnom Penh and neighboring Kandal province from the 1st to the 5th.

As a result, authorities discovered drug manufacturing laboratories and storage facilities, arrested multiple individuals, and seized related assets including cryptocurrency, over 200 kilograms of drugs, and more than 1 ton (t) of precursor chemicals used to manufacture drugs.

The U.S. Embassy in Cambodia also issued a statement saying that through cooperation between Cambodia and the DEA New Jersey Division, they "successfully cracked down on a local network that was laundering cryptocurrency on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel."

Cambodia serves as a transit route for drugs produced in the Golden Triangle, the border area where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet.

Particularly over the past several years, alongside Myanmar, it has emerged as a country dense with the world's largest criminal compounds (scam compounds), leading to the proliferation of cryptocurrency-based scams and money laundering.

In May of last year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Cambodia's Huione (Huiwang) Group for allegedly laundering at least about 4 billion dollars (approx. 5.55 trillion won) in illicit funds, including 36 million dollars (approx. 50 billion won) in cryptocurrency derived from online scams and at least 37 million dollars (approx. 514 billion won) in cryptocurrency stolen by North Korea through hacking.

Also in October of last year, the U.S. and British governments sanctioned the Prince Group—pointed to as the biggest mastermind behind Cambodian criminal compounds—and Chairman Chen Zhi on charges including fraud and money laundering via cryptocurrency, while seizing about 14 billion dollars (approx. 19.4 trillion won) worth of related Bitcoin.

According to a report released last month by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), various transnational criminal organizations from outside Southeast Asia, including Latin American drug cartels, are also involved in large-scale methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking across the Southeast Asian region.

The report explained that the activities of Latin American drug cartels in Southeast Asia "appear to go beyond simply supplying drugs or chemical substances for drug manufacturing," adding that "this region now serves as a hub for supply, financial management, and logistics for numerous Latin American criminal organizations."

The Sinaloa Cartel, alongside the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), is considered one of Mexico's two major drug cartels, and the U.S. administration of Donald Trump has designated both as foreign terrorist organizations.
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.