Officials from China, Myanmar and Thailand have reportedly reached a consensus on eradicating telecommunication fraud centres in Myanmar, a country with a long-standing fraud problem, exacerbated by the ongoing war in that country.
The agreement apparently came on Tuesday during a meeting in the Chinese city of Kunming.
At the same meeting, says Reuters, authorities from six countries – Myanmar, China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam – agreed to arrest leaders of criminal syndicates, dismantle telecom fraud centres, and "make every effort" to coordinate the rescue of those trapped there.
The BBC reported early last year that the Indian government had rescued hundreds of citizens in Cambodia who had been promised jobs but forced to undertake illegal cyber work.
Since 2023 Myanmar has deported 53,388 Chinese nationals involved in online fraud, though apparently without taking legal action. Indeed a major instance of this was reported in these pages in November 2023 when Myanmar authorities handed over thousands of telecom fraud suspects to China, after a crackdown on rising scam operations between both countries.
As we noted at the time, Myanmar and China had been working since September that year to catch fraudsters who had taken large sums of money from Chinese citizens. Among the 31,000 captured suspects were 63 “financiers” and ring leaders of crime syndicates.
According to the BBC report, while scam centres have popped up across Southeast Asia, they have been particularly prevalent in Myanmar, where they have generated billions of dollars for both Chinese underworld crime syndicates and the various armed groups operating in border towns.
