According to an official Chinese report, Liu Ren, a key member of the Prince Group led by Chen Zhi, has been escorted back to China.
On Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Public Security announced via its WeChat official account that, with the support of Cambodian authorities, a working group from the Ministry escorted Liu Ren, an important core member of the Chen Zhi criminal group, from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, back to China. This marks another achievement in China-Cambodia law enforcement cooperation.
According to the report, investigations found that in 2016, under the direction of Chen Zhi, Liu Ren and others established Jinbei Group in Cambodia and operated multiple online gambling platforms, widely recruiting and enticing Chinese citizens to gamble.
Since 2020, Jinbei Group has run telecom fraud parks in Cambodia, engaging in large-scale telecom fraud crimes involving an especially huge amount of money. In addition, Liu Ren is also suspected of serious violent crimes including illegal detention and intentional injury. Currently, Liu Ren has been subjected to compulsory measures in accordance with the law, and further investigation into related cases is ongoing.
The Ministry stated that since the beginning of this year, in the face of the grim situation regarding telecom scam crimes targeting Chinese citizens in Cambodia, police from both countries have continuously deepened pragmatic law enforcement cooperation, forcefully cracking down on scam parks and criminal dens, and capturing major “ringleader” operatives, thereby significantly shrinking the living and development space for such crimes.
According to the introduction, so far the Cambodian side has repatriated more than 20,000 telecom scam suspects and multiple murder suspects to China. The Ministry of Public Security has mobilized police in more than ten provinces and cities, including Shanxi, Shandong, Hunan, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Gansu, to fully carry out investigations.
In January this year, China’s Ministry of Public Security confirmed the escort of Chen Zhi, founder of Cambodia’s Prince Group, who was involved in telecom fraud and money laundering, from Cambodia back to China. This series of cases has exposed a huge transnational crime empire involving assets worth tens of billions of US dollars.
Li Xiong, once chairman of Huiwang Group under Prince Group and a core member of Chen Zhi’s team, was also escorted back to China from Phnom Penh by the Ministry of Public Security this April.