On January 1, Cambodia’s ban on online gaming became official. Land-based casinos also been forced to shut down, according to the Khmer Times, because tourists “are leaving the country in droves.” Hundreds of casino employees have lost their jobs.
Last August, under pressure from the Beijing government, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered that all online and arcade gambling in the kingdom be shut down by the end of 2019. So far, the Finance Ministry reports that licensed casinos have declined from 163 in June 2019 to 136 today; Lieutenant General Sieng Sen, director of the Interior Ministry’s anti-commercial gambling department, put that figure at just 91.
Ros Phearun, deputy director-general of the ministry, predicts that most of the remaining casinos will close. “They are forced to shut down because they are losing income,” he said. “We believe that in 2020, some big casinos will shut down, too.”
In a last-ditch effort to generate income, some online gaming operations rigged their games and threatened those who were unable to repay gambling debts, said Hun Sen.
“Some casinos that did not run online gambling still closed because the number of customers declined,” Phearun said. “They invested a lot, but now get less income. They cannot support the huge number of workers who worked for them. Like it or not, this is because of the influence of the ban on online gambling.”
Law enforcement promises to crack down on online casinos that continue to operate. According to Sen, “If they are still operating online gambling in their casinos, we will take action against them under the law.”
The government “does not want to stop casinos from operating,” he added. “We just banned them from running online gambling operations because it has negative impacts. Most of the casinos are in Sihanoukville. I hope that this ban will help reduce the number of crimes such as money laundering.”
According to a report by the National Police in August, 250,000 Chinese nationals were living and working in the Kingdom, including 100,000 each in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville.
Last year when the order first came down, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the ban “will help protect both Cambodian and Chinese people’s interests. It will also strengthen our law enforcement cooperation and friendly relations.”
The ban is estimated to have cost about 7,700 Cambodian citizens their jobs, and tens of thousands of Chinese nationals as well. The loss in annual tax revenues is expected to be north of US$20 million.
From January 1, authorities began to conduct inspections of all of the nation’s casinos, most of which are located in Preah Sihanouk province. No violations of the ban were immediately discovered.
