【March 25, 2026, Epoch Times】After being sanctioned and arrested by the United States and the United Kingdom, Chen Zhi, the founder and chairman of the Prince Group in Cambodia, is seeing his industries being liquidated one by one. Among them, “Huione Group,” implicated in cryptocurrency money laundering, has become the focus of attention.
According to a report by “Hong Kong 01,” the Huione Group, originally known as the “Cambodian Alipay,” appeared to be a regular mobile payment platform on the surface. However, it has been identified by U.S. investigation agencies as one of the world’s largest money laundering networks, and Hun To, the cousin of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, was a director of Huione Cambodia Company.
Huione Group’s affiliated bank, Panda Bank, is the most widely-used electronic payment platform in the country. Many businesses display signs for accepting “Huione payment.” The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) labeled “Huione” as a fraud hub for Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, as well as processing funds for North Korean cryptocurrency hackers, laundering illicit funds amounting to at least $4 billion.
It is alleged that Huione’s scale exceeds $55 billion. Huione operates multiple Telegram groups, openly selling puppet accounts to transfer scam funds, recruiting “drivers” to collect and transfer money, and even offering tools for electric shock executions. Huione was first registered in Hong Kong, with one director reported to reside in public housing in Sha Tin, where it was found that the Prince Group frequently used public housing residents as “fronts” for registration.
Huione Group was initially established in Hong Kong in December 2018. At that time, the directors and shareholders were a Taiwanese surnamed Wang residing in Taichung; by 2020, two more directors surnamed Cheung from Hong Kong, and Lin from Taiwan, reported addresses in Sha Tin, and Tainan respectively.
The company was deregistered in 2021. FinCEN pointed out that apart from this Hong Kong-based company, “Huione” had no formal registrations in any jurisdiction.
Previous investigations discovered that some of the Prince Group’s Hong Kong companies had public housing residents serving as directors, posing as shell companies to potentially conceal the actual operators behind the scenes.
In 2024, the UK blockchain analysis company Elliptic reported that Huione was involved in laundering billions of dollars in fraud funds.
Another blockchain analysis company, SlowMist, reported that between 2024 and 2025, over $61 billion in USDT cryptocurrency was transferred through Huione. Two months after the U.S. sanctions in December 2025, the transaction volume suddenly dropped to zero.
An investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found that Huione Group utilized major cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and OKX, to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies. Even after Huione was accused of being a money laundering threat and both Binance and OKX admitted to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws, the transfers continued.
One of the directors of Huione Group’s Cambodian registered company is Hun To, the cousin of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Following the U.S. and UK sanctions on the Prince Group, Huione Group in Cambodia, along with Panda Bank, had their licenses revoked and operations suspended, leading to a run on deposits. Their websites have been taken down.
On the evening of January 7, the Cambodian Chinese media “Cambodia China Times” reported that Chen Zhi was arrested in Cambodia and had been deported back to mainland China. Chen Zhi’s Cambodian nationality was revoked in December 2025.
On January 8, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security stated that Chen Zhi’s criminal group is suspected of operating gambling establishments, fraud, illegal business activities, and concealing proceeds of crime, among other offenses.
Chen Zhi, born in 1987, is from Fujian province in China. His rise to prominence is deeply intertwined with cross-border crime and online scams. In 2011, he entered the real estate market in Cambodia, became a Cambodian citizen in 2014, and founded the Prince Group the following year. His “black gold empire” expanded from real estate to include banking, finance, and tourism sectors, with business operations spanning over thirty countries. He holds dual citizenship of the UK and Cambodia.
In July 2020, Chen Zhi was awarded the “Ouknahon” title by the Cambodian government and later served as an advisor to Hun Sen and the current Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Manet. From 2021 to 2022, the Prince Group received the “Exemplary Social Responsibility Award” at the China Finance Summit for two consecutive years, with Chinese state media conducting extensive publicity for him.
In 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Chen Zhi with orchestrating fraud in Cambodia, stealing billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from victims worldwide. The U.S. Treasury Department seized over $14 billion in Bitcoin allegedly associated with him, marking it as the largest cryptocurrency seizure in history.