A crackdown on a notorious Myanmar scam base is cosmetic and timed to appease world leaders meeting in Kuala Lumpur this weekend, a senior security source has told This Week in Asia, as links between politicians and fraud empires threaten to embarrass Asean with US President Donald Trump flying in for its summit.
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Scam factories from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have raked in tens of billions of dollars since the pandemic, run mainly by Chinese syndicates defrauding victims around the world through bogus investment schemes, fake romantic relations and outright extortion.
They operate with near impunity in areas where the deluge of money buys protection from corrupt officials.
The US State Department has said US$10 billion was defrauded from its citizens last year by scammers based in Southeast Asia.
It is an issue that could become awkward for leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as the bloc holds its biggest event of the year in Malaysia in the presence of world leaders, including Trump, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
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The illicit gains have spread across the world – moved through cryptocurrency exchanges, hidden in shell companies and then pumped into prime real estate from London and New York to Singapore and Dubai.