Key Points
- On 4 September, the Cambodian CGMC considered a new casino integrity and quality assessment regime, yet failed to provide any scoring benchmarks or a start date.
- As of 1 October 2026, casino-based online gaming including live streaming of casinos to foreigners will be banned by direct order of the Prime Minister of Cambodia, Mr Hun Manet.
- Cambodian gambling taxes dropped 25.8% YOY in the first half of 2026, but the country moves forward, with an upcoming FATF review in 2029 influencing its pace and progress.
Cambodia is writing new rules for its casino industry, and the operators who need to follow them do not know what those rules are yet.
On 4 September, the Commercial Gambling Management Commission of Cambodia (CGMC) held a closed meeting chaired by Secretary General Yeth Vinel to review a draft “casino integrity and quality evaluation framework” for licence renewals. Senior officials, technical advisers, internal audit representatives, and department directors were all in the room. What they produced: a reviewed draft, a set of internal feedback, and nothing published for the operators waiting outside.
The CGMC confirmed the framework would establish minimum suitability conditions for obtaining or renewing a casino licence, grounded in Cambodian law and existing regulatory instruments. The scoring criteria remain unpublished. An implementation date has not been given. Operators have no formal benchmark to prepare against.
A Framework That Exists on Paper, Not in Practice
Cambodia has been moving toward structured casino oversight for some time. After the CGMC July meeting focused on second-half 2026 priorities and a 2027 to 2030 strategic plan, Secretary General Yeth Vinel led a delegation to meet with Victoria’s gambling regulator, the VGCCC, to study risk-based supervision and compliance models. The September 4 framework meeting is the latest step in that direction, but the gap between ambition and published guidance remains wide.
That gap matters to operators. Around 195 licensed casinos were on Cambodia’s books at the start of the inspection drive. Renewal cycles continue regardless of whether the new suitability criteria are published. Operators preparing for renewal are doing so without knowing what the regulator will formally require of them.
As the CGMC’s own statement put it, the framework aims to set conditions “based on applicable laws, regulatory instruments and the necessity to strengthen the commercial gambling sector in Cambodia.” What it does not yet say is what score an operator needs to stay licensed.
October Deadline: Online Gambling at Casinos Is Being Cut Off
Apart from the licensing system, there is an even more pressing deadline looming over the industry. According to a statement by Interior Minister Sar Sokha, all online gambling operations based on casinos in Cambodia are set to be suspended starting from October 2026 on direct orders by Prime Minister Hun Manet.
This comes in response to a particular legal loophole created back in 2020 with the introduction of a general ban on online gambling activities in Cambodia. With the ban, all online gambling was illegal, but casino operations had the right to broadcast their tables via live video streams to gamblers from other countries. This exemption, dubbed “proxy betting” by most sources, comes to an end in October. As stated by Sokha, authorities have determined that “online gambling is being livestreamed from casinos, and it is difficult for us to control the money involved.”
All casinos will face revocation of licences and additional legal consequences for not stopping their streams from October. The government insists that the period of the suspension will be spent on creating the necessary legal framework, digital infrastructure, and specialised staff for managing online gambling activities.
What 195 Inspections Actually Uncovered?
Both the licensing system and the online ban have common roots in another process: the comprehensive inspections of all licensed casinos in Cambodia and what was discovered there.
From July 2025 through 31 August 2026, 793 suspect places were inspected, 624 raided, and 86 cyber-scam centres dismantled. All 195 licensed casinos in the country were investigated, resulting in 20 licenses being revoked and 29 suspended due to associations with cyber scams, while 23 others expired without renewal. Almost 30,000 suspects of 39 different nationalities were arrested. Over 22,000 foreign nationals from 38 countries were liberated and returned home.
Legal actions were taken in connection with 27 casinos: 18 licenses were revoked, while nine were suspended. Targeted actions included individual facilities: in May, CGMC revoked the license of Casino Ying Huang in Sihanoukville due to connections to online scams and possession of weapons and narcotics. Just a month earlier, Shang Hai Resort in Svay Rieng had its license revoked after the same inspection.
As Touch Sokhak, the Deputy Spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior put it simply, the aim is to make sure that Cambodia does not become “a safe haven or money-laundering base for technology-related criminals.”
In April 2026, the Law on Combating Technology-Enabled Scams was introduced, providing for life prison terms for individuals organising operations with unlawful confinement, torture, and killings related to scam organisations.
The Economy Is Absorbing a Measurable Cost
Enforcement is indeed costly. In August, Cambodia’s gambling tax collection dropped by 25.8 per cent year-on-year to nearly $28 million during the first six months of 2026. The country’s growth prediction in 2026 has been cut from 5% to 4.2% because of the pressure on construction, real estate and consumption due to enforcement. The IMF forecast is about 3%, while according to Mekong Strategic Capital, growth in Cambodia for the year was at just 2.5%.
NagaWorld operator NagaCorp, Cambodia’s largest gaming taxpayer, reported its unaudited first-quarter GGR rising just 2.1% year-on-year to $174.7 million. Premium VIP GGR fell 16.2% and referral VIP GGR dropped 52.4% in the same period. The data reflects what happens to a casino economy when the cross-border money flows that sustained it are suddenly treated as a compliance problem.
The government’s position is that the short-term cost is necessary. Cambodia was placed on the FATF grey list in 2019 over serious concerns about AML and counter-terrorism financing controls in its casino sector, and spent years working to get removed. It was finally delisted in 2023 after a multi-year remediation programme. Cambodia is now grouped with Macau, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand for its next FATF evaluation round in 2029. Returning to the grey list after all that effort would cost Cambodia far more than a difficult economic year.
A Conference Is Coming, the Framework Is Not Ready
Phnom Penh is hosting a major anti-scam conference on 23 to 24 September, now carrying the official theme “Acting Together towards Breaking the Chain and Eradication of Online Scams.” Prime Minister Hun Manet has publicly framed the entire crackdown as an effort to “clean our house” and restore Cambodia’s international standing.
The conference arrives while the integrity framework remains a draft. Operators face a suspended online channel from October, rising inspection pressure, and licence renewal criteria that have not been published. The gap between the government’s political messaging and the regulatory detail available to operators is, for now, considerable.
Expert Analysis
Cambodia is doing something strategically shrewd and operationally incomplete at the same time, and we think that tension deserves more scrutiny than it is getting.
The sequencing of this crackdown is not accidental. Enforcement closed nearly 100 casinos before the new licensing framework was drafted. The October online ban removes a revenue stream before the rules governing its return are written. The integrity framework was reviewed on 4 September with no criteria published. We think the government is deliberately clearing the field through enforcement pressure before formalising what the new, smaller, cleaner sector looks like. That approach is faster and politically easier than running operators through a transparent scoring system and denying renewals in public.
The evidence supports it. Geopolitical analyst Seng Vanly cautioned after the online ban announcement that criminal networks can shift from casinos to smaller and less visible locations when enforcement concentrates on licensed premises. His concern is well-founded: Amnesty International identified 86 scamming compounds in Cambodia as of April 2026, up from 53 in its June 2025 report, and found evidence of state intervention at only 24 of them. The government rejected that assessment and pointed to 400-plus solved cases. Both claims can be partly true simultaneously.
What Cambodia actually needs from the integrity framework is a credible answer to one question: how does a regulator distinguish a reformed operator from one that has simply gone quiet? Without published criteria, that question cannot be answered publicly, only decided internally. The 2029 FATF evaluation round will force a more transparent answer. Until then, the framework’s absence tells operators, investors, and international watchdogs as much as its contents ever could.
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