MANILA: Southeast Asia’s interior and security ministers met in Manila on Tuesday to jointly address cybercrime, human trafficking and online scams, a growing concern in the region.
Over the past few years, Southeast Asia has been increasingly targeted as a hub for transnational organized crime and industrial-scale scam centers, which are defrauding victims globally with the use of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, and have been trafficking people from dozens of countries to operate their infrastructure.
“Reports have associated online scamming operations in parts of Southeast Asia with potential annual economic losses of approximately $114 billion. Behind that number are families whose lives have been devastated by fraud, trafficking and exploitation,” Philippine Interior Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla said in his address to the participants of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime.
The meeting is hosted by the Philippines, which holds ASEAN’s rotating chairship in 2026.
“Cybercrime, online scams, trafficking in persons, forced criminality and money laundering feed each other, and they operate across multiple jurisdictions. Alongside them, illicit drug trafficking, terrorism and violent extremism, people smuggling and arms smuggling continue to threaten our region,” Remulla said, as he called for advancing commitments to enable cooperation among law enforcement agencies under the ASEAN Plan of Action in Combating Transnational Crime 2026 to 2035.
The meeting is taking place amid increased crackdowns on the compounds, many of which have been indicated to be in the border areas of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
Cambodia announced last month that it raided 488 suspected scam locations and apprehended more than 20,000 people involved in their operations during the first half of 2026 alone.
The ASEAN ministers’ meeting will also include consultations on broadening law enforcement cooperation with the 11-member bloc’s partners — China, Japan and South Korea — which have also been affected by the activity of Southeast Asia’s fraud hubs.
Last week, a Chinese court sentenced three high-ranking gang leaders to death for operating large-scale industrial scam compounds in Myanmar’s Kokang, a region bordering China. The syndicate was linked to telecommunications fraud of more than $1.8 billion, drug trafficking, illegal casino operations and murder.