Thai court to extradite scam hub tycoon She Zhijiang to China
She and his company Yatai have been slapped with sanctions by Britain and the US
[BANGKOK] A tycoon linked to illegal scam hub operations on the Thai-Myanmar border will be extradited to face criminal charges in China, a court in Bangkok ordered on Monday (Nov 10).
Chinese businessman She Zhijiang, 43, has been in a detention in Thailand since 2022, fighting an extradition request from Beijing over his mega projects and gambling ventures in Shwe Kokko, Myanmar.
He holds Cambodian citizenship and has been on the run from Chinese authorities since 2012, according to Chinese media reports.
In its final ruling on the case, an appeals court in Bangkok said in a statement on Monday that it upheld an order for She’s extradition to China “within 90 days”.
She and his company Yatai have been slapped with sanctions by Britain and the US.
The US Treasury said in September that Shwe Kokko was a “resort city custom built for gambling, drug trafficking, prostitution, and scams targeting people around the world”.
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An Interpol red notice published May 2021 and obtained by AFP says She is facing criminal charges in China related to running online gambling and fraud operations.
In pleas written from a Bangkok prison and seen by AFP, She has denied all allegations of criminality and insisted his company was simply an “urban developer”.
His attorney Daniel Arshack told AFP the Chinese allegations against She were “fabricated” to compel Thailand to send him back.
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Once in China, “like so many other individuals, it is expected that he will be deprived of due process, tortured, and ultimately disappeared,” Arshack said.
Sprawling fraud factories have boomed in war-torn Myanmar’s loosely governed border regions, housing mostly Chinese workers targeting unsuspecting Internet users with romance and business cons worth tens of billions of US dollars annually.
Shwe Kokko, one of the most notorious scam compounds in the region, is a gleaming built-up city visible across the river from Thailand’s western border.
Earlier this month China sentenced five people to death for their involvement in a violent criminal gang with fraud operations in Myanmar’s Kokang region. AFP
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