Since its founding eight years ago, the Prince Group has emerged as one of Cambodia’s most ubiquitous brands. Its name touches nearly every corner of the Cambodian marketplace: shopping malls, supermarkets, banks, casinos, apartments, cinemas, office blocks, private jets, pleasure boats, film production, hotels, venture capital firms, ride-hailing services, restaurants and more.

The company’s reach also extends well beyond Cambodia. Its leaders have a controlling interest in at least three companies listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Prince Chairman Chen Zhi, an enigmatic 36-year-old Chinese national who rose to become a top adviser to both Cambodia’s current and former prime ministers, owns a quarter of Cuba’s national cigar company, valued at $2.8 billion, as well as a $114 million office building in one of London’s richest neighborhoods.

In total, RFA has identified more than $1.5 billion of assets and investments in 31 countries in which senior Prince Group executives have a stake.

Previously unreported Chinese criminal court judgments dating from 2020 to 2022 describe Chen’s Prince Group as a “notorious transnational online gambling criminal group” that has generated at least 5 billion yuan ($700 million) in illicit revenue. In May 2020, Beijing police established a special task force to investigate the Prince Group, court records show. Since then, there have been at least seven judgments from separate Chinese provincial courts convicting low-level Prince Group or Prince Group-linked employees of gambling and money laundering offenses.

The Prince Group itself and Chen so far do not appear to have become the subjects of a Chinese prosecution. A representative of Prince Group told RFA the company denies all the allegations, which it believes are the result of “impersonation by criminal elements.”

Panha has an idea of the horrors that take place within the Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park in Cambodia’s southeastern border town Chrey Thom. He has witnessed what happens to those who try to leave.

“When they recapture escaped workers they beat them until they’re barely alive. I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” Panha told RFA, declining to give his family name. His brother, he said, is head of security at the 15-acre (four-hectare) facility, and Panha has watched him hunt down escapees. “If you don’t beat them they will stop being afraid and more will try to escape.”

While the compound is ostensibly open to the public, and billed as an industrial park, it is surrounded by a 10-foot-high (three-meter) concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Its heavy, metal front gate is manned by uniformed security guards, who bar entry to ordinary visitors.

Built by the powerful and well-connected Prince Group, the facility now counts cyberscam operations among its businesses, according to witnesses, staff and former employees. While the group denies any involvement in the park, it is run by a company headed by Prince executives and bears several other indicators of connections to the group.
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Cambodian corporate records suggest that the park’s parent company, Golden Fortune, is run by Ing Dara, a businessman with extensive ties to the Prince Group. He holds directorships in a number of Prince companies, including one cited by the Prince Group’s founder as the ultimate source of his wealth in disclosures to an offshore bank. Ing Dara and Golden Fortune could not be reached for comment.

RFA has previously revealed that Chinese police have established a special task force to investigate the Prince Group’s alleged money laundering and illegal online gambling operations run from Cambodia. In part two of our series, RFA explored how illicit funds appear to be washed and funneled into legal Prince Group-affiliated businesses.

Over the past several weeks, the U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia (RFA) has published a three-part investigative report into the clandestine dealings of the Prince Group, a multi-billion-dollar Cambodian conglomerate. Over the past decade, Prince and its enigmatic chief executive, the Chinese national Chen Zhi, have risen from obscurity to the top echelon of Cambodia’s economic elite, with the ear of the country’s top leaders and a place in the inner circle of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The product of three years of work, the RFA reports allege that at least $700 million of Prince Group’s profit is from illegal transnational crime.

Jack Adamović Davies, a former journalist for the English-language Phnom Penh Post who is now based in Belgrade, was the lead investigator and author of the report. He spoke with The Diplomat’s Southeast Asia Editor Sebastian Strangio about Chen’s swift rise, what it says about the structure of Cambodia’s political economy, and the story’s broader relevance.

Your most recent investigation focuses on Chen Zhi, the chairman of the tentacular Prince Group, which in less than a decade has risen to become one of the most prominent conglomerates in Cambodia, and now holds a considerable portfolio of overseas assets. Who is Chen, how did he end up in Cambodia, and what is the primary source of his wealth, according to your research?

Chen was born in China in 1987 and sometime between now and then he’s become one of Cambodia’s richest and best connected citizens. Three years ago I set out to answer a question: how was this guy able to transform himself from a fresh-faced nobody into a billionaire advisor to the Cambodian prime minister in less than a decade?

We still can’t say for certain where all his money comes from. But,

What does Chen’s sudden prominence say about the ways that business works in Cambodia under the CPP? What does it say about the country’s politics more broadly?

In every country the politically powerful and the mega-wealthy seem to have a magnet-like attraction to one another. What sets Cambodia apart is the almost total lack of societal or regulatory checks on these relationships. Plenty of individuals like Chen have turned up in Phnom Penh with lots of cash and few explanations of where the money came from. And they have been welcomed by the country’s political elites with wide open arms.

For most of its history, Cambodia’s ruling party has kept the wheels of its patronage machine oiled with kickbacks on concessions to strip the country’s forests, parcel out its land, and extract its natural resources. But Cambodia’s forests today are decimated and much of what’s left of them was parceled out to political cronies over the last couple of years in what looked like former Prime Minister HE securing loyalty ahead of the transfer of power last August to his son and successor HM. Attempts to tap Cambodia’s undersea oil reserves ended in bankruptcy. The decade-long real estate bubble has burst. Even tourism has failed to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic in line with comparable countries.

Legitimate sources of revenue are fast drying up for the CPP and into that fiscal void have stepped characters like Chen. Cambodia under the CPP has always been something of a protection racket. So long as businesses kicked up bribes to officials and politicians, they would have access to the resources they needed, helpful investment conditions and favorable treatment by the courts. Much of that money would go towards furnishing the officials’ mansions and educating their children at elite foreign schools. But lots of it would also go towards doling out “gifts” to the general population – the carrots to the CPP’s repressive stick that has kept it in power and ensured a stable investment climate for the businesses paying the kickbacks.

But, as the era of the shell company passes its peak, the era of the “shell country” is having its ascendancy and Cambodia is a prime example of the phenomenon.

It is possible to turn up in Cambodia with boatloads of dirty cash and build not just a web of shell companies to mask it, but instead an entire Potemkin business empire to justify your wealth’s existence – providing you get the right politicians on your side. Cambodia has become a country where an individual or company can choose to tell almost any story about themselves and their wealth.

If you decide a few years later that you’d like your children to grow up in London, Paris or New York, you’re no longer a suspiciously youthful billionaire, you’re a visionary entrepreneur who struck it rich in Cambodia.

Radio Free Asia has released Part Three of a self-proclaimed “expose” against Prince Holding Group by freelance “journalist” Mr. Jack Adamović Davies, who resides and works in Serbia. Similar to Mr. Davies’ previous articles, the latest article contains serious, and unsubstantiated, allegations about Prince Holding Group.

Prince Holding Group’s response is set out below.

1. Like his previous attempts at “journalism”, Mr. Davies’ latest article consists of a single sensational allegation, supported by logical leaps, half-truths and/or misleading statements, and outright fabrications.

2. The central allegation in the articleis that Prince Holding Group conducted, or was involved in, human trafficking, torture, and cyberscam operations at the “Golden FortuneScience and Technology Park”. This allegation, like many of Mr. Davies’ other statements, is false.

3. Prince Holding Group does not ownor manage the compound known as “Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park”, and is not involved in anyof the alleged activities conducted therein.It has no knowledge or control over the alleged activities in the alleged compound.

4. Mr. Davies’ attempt to link the compound to Prince Holding Group is based on a number of false or misleading statements, which are addressed below:

a) Mr. Davies alleges that the compound is run by a company “headed by Prince executives”. This is false. None of Prince Holding Group’s executives work in Golden Fortune, the company that Mr. Davies alleges as the compound’s parent company, let alone head it.

b) Mr. Davies alleges that Mr. Ing Dara, has extensive ties to Prince Holding Group and holds directorships in a number of Prince companies. This is false. Mr. Ing Darais not an employee of Prince Holding Group and does not hold directorships, or own any shares, in Prince Holding Group or any of its subsidiaries.

c) Mr Davies suggests that Heng Xin Real Estate (“HXRE”) is the source of Prince Holding Group Chairman Chen Zhi’s wealth. This is misleading. HXRE was a company founded by Mr. Chen Zhi. In 2018, Mr. Chen Zhi sold all his shares in HXRE. Following the foregoing disposal in 2018, Mr. Chen Zhi ceased being a director or shareholder of HXRE and no longer had any involvement in HXRE. At no time were Mr. Chen Zhi and Mr. Ing Dara co-directors of Heng Xin Real Estate. Mr. Chen Zhi’s divestment clearly predates the allegations relating to HXRE, a fact that Mr. Davis had omitted, which would have been highlymisleading to the public.

d) Mr. Davies suggests that the compound is a development operated by Prince Huan Yu Real Estate (“Prince Huan Yu”), a subsidiary of Prince Holding Group. This is false. In or around 2019, a client engaged Prince Huan Yu to construct a commercial property in Chrey Thom.The project requirements matched those of a standard, commercial property and there was no reason for Prince Huan Yu to suspect anything amiss. Prince Huan Yu completed construction and relinquished control and possession of the premises to the client in 2020 in accordance with the terms of the relevant contract.

e) Finally, the article alleges that a Chinese Court in WancangCounty had made a finding in 2022 that Prince Holding Group had been “in collaboration” with certain individuals in establishing illegal online casinos. This is false.The Chinese Court did not make a finding that Prince Holding Group had collaborated in the establishment of illegal online casinos. In a previous statement, Prince Holding Group had pointed out that criminals had been found to have falsely used the name of “Prince Group”, in order to deceive their victims. https://www.princeholdinggroup.com/2023 ... m-llp/This obviously does not mean that Prince Holding Group was involved in these criminal schemes and it would be naïve to think otherwise.

5. It is disheartening that an organisation that claims to be a credible news source, would lend its name to an article that cannot withstand even basic scrutiny or fact-checking.

6. It is also glaring that, although the activities in Mr. Davies’ article are widely reported to have been committed by various named individuals and entities, Mr. Davies has chosen not to write about them. Instead, Mr. Davies has obsessed himself with making tenuous and unsubstantiated links between these individuals and Prince Holding Group. Prince Holding Group categorically denies the allegations made by Mr. Davies.

7. As previously stated, Prince Holding Group has engaged law firm, Duane Morris & Selvam LLP to advise it on its rights and the appropriate next course of action.

By:

Prince Holding Group

Duane Morris & Selvam LLP