Cambodia Drafts a Suitability Test Every Casino Must Pass to Renew Its Licence

The Commercial Gambling Management Commission is building an integrity and quality evaluation framework that would set minimum conditions for holding a casino licence. It follows a year in which the regulator revoked 20 licences and suspended 29 more over links to online scam operations.

• Cambodia's gaming regulator is developing a casino integrity and quality evaluation framework to govern licence renewals
• The General Secretariat of the Commercial Gambling Management Commission reviewed the proposal at a meeting on 4 September chaired by Secretary-General Yeth Vinel
• The framework would determine the minimum suitability conditions for obtaining and retaining a casino licence
• No assessment criteria and no implementation timetable have been published
• It follows the crackdown in which Cambodia revoked 20 casino licences and suspended 29 over alleged links to online scam operations

A Renewal Test, in a Market Where Renewal Has Recently Meant Revocation

Cambodia's gambling regulator is drafting a framework that would set minimum suitability conditions for casinos seeking to keep their licences, according to an official statement reported by Asia Gaming Brief. The General Secretariat of the Commercial Gambling Management Commission of Cambodia, the CGMC, reviewed and discussed the proposed casino integrity and quality evaluation framework at a meeting on 4 September.

The meeting was chaired by CGMC Secretary-General Yeth Vinel and included senior officials, technical advisers and representatives of the regulator's internal audit unit. The CGMC said the framework would determine the minimum suitability conditions for obtaining a casino licence, drawing on the applicable laws and regulatory instruments and on the need to strengthen the commercial gambling sector. It has not disclosed the specific assessment criteria or an implementation timetable, and the statement has not yet appeared in the regulator's own published archive of meetings, which currently runs to late August.

The context is a year of attrition in the licensed estate. Cambodian authorities investigated 195 licensed casinos between July 2025 and 31 July 2026, revoking 20 licences and suspending 29 over links to online scam activity, according to official figures released in August. A further 23 casinos had their licences expire and ceased operations in the same period. Across the wider campaign, authorities investigated 751 locations suspected of involvement in online scam operations and shut down 605 of them.

Individual properties have been named. In May the CGMC revoked the licence of Casino Ying Huang in Sihanoukville after authorities alleged involvement in online scams and uncovered the illegal possession of weapons and narcotics. A month earlier it revoked the licence of Shang Hai Resort in Svay Rieng province after an inspection uncovered activity linked to online scams. In June it issued a press release revoking the licence of Radiant Pearl Investment Limited, which operated the Roxy Hotel and Casino in Bavet, Svay Rieng.

The Framework Is One Output Among Two Dozen

The suitability work sits inside a broader institutional programme the regulator has been running through 2026. In August the CGMC held two weeks of progress reviews covering 21 of the 24 outputs scheduled for completion this year, delivered by eight working groups drawn from its departments and internal audit unit. Those outputs cover the drafting of regulatory instruments, standard operating procedures, information technology systems, and on-site inspection and monitoring of gambling activity. A separate internal meeting on 21 August reviewed the working group implementing the government's Order No. 01 of 14 July 2025 on the campaign against online scams.

The regulator has also been tightening financial reporting. On 24 August it convened representatives of 59 casino operators to explain their obligation to submit independent audit reports and supporting documents for 2025, under Articles 54 to 57 of the Law on the Management of Commercial Gambling, after extending the submission deadline to the end of August.

Suitability Testing Is How a Licensing Regime Stops Fighting the Last Fire

Cambodia has spent the past year removing licences after the fact, on evidence of scam operations found by inspection or by police action. A minimum suitability standard applied at renewal moves the decision earlier, and it changes what the regulator has to prove. Revocation requires findings of wrongdoing; refusal to renew requires only that an applicant fails to meet a published condition. For a jurisdiction with a large estate of small border-town properties and limited inspection capacity, that shift in burden is worth more than additional enforcement resource.

The Framework Will Be Judged on What It Asks About Ownership

The statement gives no criteria, and the criteria are the entire story. A framework that asks about financial standing, physical premises and reporting compliance will produce paperwork. One that asks who beneficially owns the licensee, who leases the property, which payment processors are used and who occupies the upper floors is a scam-operations test in licensing clothing. Cambodia's problem has consistently been the second category, and the properties revoked so far were penalised for what happened inside buildings they controlled rather than for how they were owned.

A Regulator That Publishes Late Cannot Yet Publish a Standard

The CGMC's own archive of statements ran to 24 August when this meeting was reported, and it publishes in Khmer more consistently than in English. That lag matters for a suitability regime, because the value of a published standard is that operators, banks and counterparties can read it and act on it. Regional operators weighing Asian licensing regimes and looking at Cambodia after the border disruption with Thailand need predictability more than they need severity. Publishing the criteria and the timetable, in both languages, would do more for the sector's standing than another round of revocations.

Cambodia is building the machinery of a modern licensing regime, department by department, and the suitability framework is the piece that would make the rest enforceable. Until the criteria are public, it is an intention rather than a standard.