Forty-Six Countries Launch an Anti-Scam Alliance, With Cambodia Among Them

The International Alliance Combating Telecom and Cyber Fraud was formally launched on 10 September, with the United Nations and Interpol represented as observers. Its initiating countries include Cambodia, whose regulator has spent the past year revoking casino licences over links to exactly the scam operations the alliance exists to disrupt.

• The International Alliance Combating Telecom and Cyber Fraud was launched on 10 September with 46 founding countries, according to Xinhua citing China's Ministry of Public Security
• It was unveiled at the 2026 Conference of the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum, with 34 observer countries and four international organisations represented, including the United Nations and Interpol
• The initiating countries are China, Vietnam, Laos, Kenya, Cambodia, Pakistan and Russia
• Planned areas of cooperation include intelligence sharing, cross-border case coordination, fugitive tracking, asset recovery and joint enforcement
• China announced plans for the alliance in July, when more than 40 countries had expressed interest

An Intergovernmental Body for a Problem That Has Outgrown Bilateral Policing

Forty-six countries have founded the International Alliance Combating Telecom and Cyber Fraud, launched on 10 September and reported by Xinhua News Agency citing China's Ministry of Public Security. It was unveiled during the 2026 Conference of the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum, where 34 further countries attended as observers alongside four international organisations, among them the United Nations and Interpol.

The initiating countries are China, Vietnam, Laos, Kenya, Cambodia, Pakistan and Russia. A joint statement described telecom and cyber fraud as a global challenge requiring stronger international cooperation, and called for a more focused, professional, efficient and action-oriented intergovernmental organisation founded on international conventions.

The stated purpose is to give law enforcement agencies a common framework. Expected cooperation covers intelligence sharing, cross-border case coordination, fugitive tracking, asset recovery and joint enforcement, and the organisation says it also aims to protect the security and legitimate rights of individuals, legal entities and other organisations.

China set out plans for the alliance in July, when the Ministry of Public Security said more than 40 countries had expressed interest. Its formal establishment extends cooperation beyond the bilateral operations that have characterised the response so far, as authorities confront scam networks that operate across multiple jurisdictions at once.

Why This Sits on a Gambling Desk

The scam compounds that have driven this response are, in several countries, physically and commercially entangled with licensed casinos. Cambodia is the clearest case, and it is a founding member. Its regulator investigated 195 licensed casinos between July 2025 and 31 July 2026, revoking 20 licences and suspending 29 over links to online scam activity, with a further 23 expiring. Across the wider campaign, 751 locations were investigated and 605 shut down. This month the Commercial Gambling Management Commission began drafting a suitability test for licence renewals, and Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered all casino-based online betting suspended from October.

Asset Recovery and Fugitive Tracking Are the Two Words That Matter

Intelligence sharing between police forces already happens. What has been missing is a standing mechanism for the parts that fail at the border: following money out of a jurisdiction that will not cooperate, and pursuing individuals who move between countries that have no extradition arrangement. Naming asset recovery and fugitive tracking as cooperation areas is therefore the substantive commitment in the statement, and it is also the one that will be hardest to deliver, because it requires member states to act against proceeds and people they may have an interest in protecting.

A Membership List That Includes the Jurisdictions Most Associated With the Problem

The founding group contains countries whose territory hosts scam operations and whose casino sectors have been implicated in them, which cuts two ways. It makes the alliance more useful than a body composed only of victim countries, because enforcement has to happen where the compounds are. It also means the organisation's credibility depends on members acting against operations on their own soil, and Cambodia's licence revocations are the most concrete evidence so far that at least one of them will. The absence of a published compliance mechanism is the obvious gap.

It Arrives the Same Week as FATF, Which Is Not a Coincidence

The Financial Action Task Force published its own gambling and financial crime study this week, with contributions from more than 80 jurisdictions, setting out red-flag indicators for casinos, online operators and their supervisors. One body sets the standards supervisors are assessed against; the other proposes to coordinate the police work. Operators in South East Asia should read the two together, because the practical consequence is that a licensed casino's tenancy arrangements, payment rails and upper floors are now of interest to two separate international processes at once.

Forty-six countries agreeing that a problem exists is the easy part. What the alliance recovers, and from whom, is how it will be judged.