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Sihanoukville – Chan Vorleak wiped away tears as she sat in her small room in a dormitory for day laborers in Sihanoukville. Since April, she has helped build concrete forms at Peninsula Bay, a $574 million luxury resort on the city’s waterfront, and her pay has regularly come late.
“I did not expect that I would have to ask my children to drop out of school and come work here,” she said.
Vorleak, her husband and their two teenage sons — one of whom is only 15 — work for a subcontractor at the resort, where she earns $11 a day. Struggling with debt, the family, like several others CamboJA News spoke with, migrated from border provinces to the port city, known for its empty condominium towers, casinos and, until recently, industrial-scale scam compounds. A yearlong crackdown on the scam industry has since pushed the city into a downturn.
Workers at the site said their pay has been delayed repeatedly in recent months and that work is drying up. The resort, which a provincial official once hailed as a sign of foreign investors’ trust in the region, is now two years behind schedule, with completion pushed back to 2030.
Payment disputes are common on Cambodian construction sites. But the delays at Peninsula Bay come as the developer’s former directors have been cut off from the U.S. financial system, a CamboJA News review of corporate records and U.S. Treasury Department sanctions shows.
In April, the Treasury Department sanctioned Aik Paung and Sai Aung Linn, Burmese-born Cambodian citizens, over their alleged involvement in scam and money laundering operations. Corporate records, since removed from the government’s business registry, show the two were directors of the company behind the resort until December 2025. The same package targeted the pair’s companies, a bank Treasury said Linn controls, and ruling party Senator Kok An, who has denied any role in online scams.
The developer, Peninsula Bay Investment, was not named in the sanctions. But the project shows the risks Cambodia faces as it tries to untangle its economy from the fraud trade, an industry estimated to generate $12.5 billion a year in the country, according to a 2024 report by the U.S. Institute of Peace.
‘When We Protest, We Get the Money’
On site, workers have one name for whoever is holding up their pay: “Peninsula Bay.”
It is the only name most of them know for the sprawling project, which workers said has many Chinese subcontractors. None of the laborers CamboJA News interviewed could name the companies that employ them.
Vorleak said she and the dozens of laborers on her team have regularly been paid five to 10 days late. Her manager told the team that Peninsula Bay had paid the subcontractor late, leaving it short of money, she said. CamboJA News identified Hui An Construction Co. Ltd. from the logo on her hard hat but could not confirm whether it works on the project. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
The delays have made it hard for her to keep up with payments on a microloan. “So when the payment is delayed, I am almost crazy,” she said.
There is also less work now. Vorleak sometimes waits days for a manager to call her, but she cannot take jobs elsewhere, she said, because she could be evicted from the temporary housing her employer rents for workers. In recent months, she has worked only 10 to 15 days a month.
Without knowing who employs them, workers have few ways to press for late wages. Some have turned to protest.
Sorn Saren, 38, a plasterer from Kampot province, said her group protested in August after their wages were about a week late, a problem that began only about four months earlier, though she has worked at the site since November 2025. Workers from nearly every company at the site have done the same, she said, sitting at the gate and refusing to work. Her manager even asked workers to join a protest to demand payment from Peninsula Bay.
“When we protest, we get the money,” she said.
A crew that ties steel reinforcing bars for concrete, employed by another subcontractor, said their pay had been late for the past two months, and that their boss blamed the company leading the project. Two translators for Chinese subcontractors described similar delays.
One of them, Ly Chandy, was sent by his boss to confront “Peninsula Bay” representatives when a payment was late.
“I told them, ‘We come to work here to make a living, and now you are late with our payment. How can we live?’” he said. The money arrived after the meeting.
Chandy said he believed the delays may stem from cash-flow problems, though he added that some subcontractors also misuse money meant for their workers. The other translator, Khan Vong, said Peninsula Bay representatives had blamed a cash shortage.
Taken together, the workers’ accounts place the start of the delays around April, the month the U.S. sanctioned the developer’s former directors. CamboJA News could not determine whether the two are connected.
Aik Yon, Peninsula Bay Investment’s current chairman, according to the Commerce Ministry’s business registry, hung up when CamboJA News asked about the delays. A man identifying himself as a company administrator later asked for questions in writing but did not respond to them.
From Showcase to Sanctions
The Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), the government’s one-stop body for foreign investment, approved the project in early 2024. The developer, registered in March 2023 as Ban Dao Investment — the Chinese word for peninsula — and renamed Peninsula Bay Investment in 2024, was headed by Paung and Linn, according to corporate records.
The CDC valued the project — a hotel with about 2,870 rooms, high-rise condominiums and a commercial center — at $574 million. A company project manager told the pro-government Khmer Times in January 2025 that the investment had risen to $1 billion. In September, Kheang Phearom, a spokesperson for the Preah Sihanouk province, put the company’s capital at $500 million and said he had no information about its shareholders. Completion has been pushed back from 2028 to 2030, he said.
A sales representative at the resort said most of the complex has been built, including 90% of its four condominium towers, where some units are already leased. The company is focused on finishing the hotel and filling in the sea in front of the development for a waterfront promenade, the representative said.
Long Dimanche, a deputy provincial governor, declined to comment on the sanctions or the late payments, saying those issues fell under the CDC. Dimanche presided over a consultation on the project’s environmental impact assessment in 2025, Khmer Times reported.
A CDC spokesperson declined to say whether the council would review the project in light of the sanctions, or to comment on the delayed wages. He referred questions to the province’s investment promotion working group, whose chief secretary, Im Sokthy, did not respond.
CamboJA News could not reach Paung, and Linn did not respond to questions sent through an assistant. The project’s main contractor, China State Construction Engineering Corp., a Chinese state-owned company; British hotel group IHG, which plans to open a 300-room InterContinental at the site; and Finnish elevator maker KONE did not respond to questions about whether they are continuing their partnerships.
A Question About Viability
More than two years after its approval, the resort’s prospects look uncertain. International arrivals to Cambodia fell 44.4% in the first eight months of this year, according to the Ministry of Tourism, and Sihanoukville has taken an economic hit from the exodus of scam workers who fled police crackdowns.
Chea Kimsea, research and consulting services manager at Advantage Property Services, said Sihanoukville’s market was built on Chinese demand that has dropped sharply since online gambling was banned.
“That shopping mall will be heavily impacted if there are no Chinese nationals living in Sihanoukville or if tourism to Cambodia, especially Sihanoukville, declines,” he said of the resort. He does not expect the city’s property market to recover within five years.
Stephen Higgins, managing partner of the Phnom Penh-based investment firm Mekong Strategic Capital, said the sanctions alone could stall the project.
“If the principals behind it are on the sanctions list, it’s going to be very hard to get it completed,” he said. “But there’s a bigger issue, which is that I just don’t see how the market can absorb that much supply anyway.”
For a project like Peninsula Bay to succeed, Higgins said, Sihanoukville must stop being seen as a “Chinese satellite city,” which attracts tourists and investors from only one market. He said the government should also demolish failed buildings and either auction off the land or turn it into parks.
“It is going to take many years to undo the damage that has been done to Sihanoukville,” he said, “and questions should be asked about how it was allowed to happen in the first place.”