Huione, Cambodia, and the Limits of Anti-Money Laundering
In December 2025, Cambodia’s central bank shut down Huione Group, one of the world’s largest hubs for laundering criminal money. They laundered more than $4 billion since 2021, from “pig-butchering” scams to North Korean cyber heists. Yet Huione was no underground operation. It was a polished, licensed financial institution whose legitimate business masked a vast laundering network. Why did it take so long? The answer exposes an anti-money laundering system built, almost by design, to miss exactly this kind of institution. Huione’s shutdown is being called a victory, but is it real reform, or compliance under pressure?