Multiple companies linked to the $1.5 billion Mauerberger network have been "vanished" from the nation’s corporate registry. This means that all historical reference to the company has been forcibly removed by the administrator, as if they never existed.
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For two months, we’ve tracked the $1.5 billion Mauerberger network, an illicit financial web linking sanctioned Chinese scam centers in Cambodia—where trafficked workers target Americans—to major banks, crypto exchanges, and powerful politicians across Southeast Asia.
Now, as the U.S. and U.K. takes decisive action against another Southeast Asian criminal gang targeting Westerners, those at the heart of the Mauerberger network have executed a sophisticated digital disappearing act. Multiple companies tied to Yim Leak, a powerful Cambodian businessman, have been “vanished” from the nation’s corporate registry. All historical references to these businesses, including their banking activities and land deals, have been forcibly erased, as if they never existed.
This move indicates a desperate attempt to obscure a paper trail that our investigation suggests leads from prison-like scam compounds straight to the region's financial and political elite.
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This article is part of Whale Hunting, our ongoing investigation into the money laundering network connecting Southeast Asian scam centers to Thailand's political elite.
Western authorities are turning the heat up on scam centers, which use trafficked labor in prison-like compounds across Southeast Asia to con Americans out of $10 billion annually, often through fake crypto investment schemes.
The U.K. and U.S. this week announced a criminal indictment against Chen Zhi of Prince Group for running scam compounds in Cambodia and a record $15 billion seizure of Bitcoin connected to the fraud.
This is adding to pressure on the Mauerberger network.
The vanished companies include BIC (Cambodia) Bank, which Yim Leak and his silent partner Benjamin Mauerberger, the South African mastermind of the network, set up in 2017 as an alleged front to move billions of dollars in illicit cash. In 2023, the U.K. imposed sanctions on Zhengheng, a Chinese-owned company alleged to operate scam centers in Long Bay, a Cambodian real estate project, using trafficked workers. The U.K. noted that BIC Bank was a subsidiary of Zhengheng.
BIC Bank’s website also stopped working in recent days. The Ministry of Commerce database shows BIC Bank has changed its name to IBANK, whose website until today showed Yim Leak as chairman. Branches have also been rebranded (but you can't change a SWIFT code that easily: it remains BIOBKHPP).
Another Yim Leak-connected company “vanished” recently is U. Property Management. According to two people familiar with the matter, U. Property sold huge parcels of land in Long Bay to Zhengheng, operated by Chinese-Cambodian Deng Pibing, making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
BIC Bank would take deposits of cash and crypto orchestrated by Deng Pibing and other Chinese investors, sometimes as much as $60 million in a single day, one of the people said. The bank's main operations involved related parties, with the branch networks just a front, the person said.
Before records were scrubbed, U. Property listed Yim Leak and Ben Smith as directors. Ben Smith is an alias for Benjamin Mauerberger, who allegedly oversees the money laundering operations. People who worked for BIC Group, which also included insurance, forex trading and other businesses, called Mauerberger “boss,” while Yim Leak, whose father is a former deputy prime minister, gave the operations political cover in Cambodia.
A former boiler room stock operator, Mauerberger, 47, was discrete, staying in the Rosewood hotel in Phnom Penh and limiting his contacts. Yim Leak, 39, meanwhile, was showy, generating social media interest for driving a $3.5 million Bugatti Chiron in Bangkok with a “Boss” numberplate.
Another director of U. Property was Eugene Tang, a Singaporean who co-founded Capital Asia Investments (CAI), a Singapore-based finance company. As we’ve reported, CAI is an alleged front for the Mauerberger network, transferring hundreds of millions of dollars of funds into Thai energy and finance companies via Singapore, a regional financial hub, using Mauerberger’s wife and others as cutouts.
The operations were given political cover in Thailand by Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister for whom Mauerberger bought a $60 million Bombardier Global G7500 earlier this year. Sathit Limpongpan, a former chairman of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, was a chairman of BIC Bank. Kasikorn Bank in Thailand, the only foreign bank with which BIC Bank had a banking relationship, was used to move large amounts of money into Thailand, said the person familiar with the matter.
Mauerberger also oversaw the movement of bags full of cash from Cambodia to Bangkok via private jet, often hundreds of thousands of dollars a time (sometimes with padlocks around the bags), according to this person and another source.
As Whale Hunting has reported, Mauerberger’s network more recently moved to take control of Finansia, a Thai financial company, and this year offloaded those stakes to fronts controlled by Kucoin, a large crypto exchange. This gave the network, which also owns crypto mining operations in Laos, the ability to move huge amounts between digital currencies and the regular financial system without oversight. Thailand’s deputy finance minister, Vorapak Tanyawong (an adviser to BIC Group), and his wife were involved in the transactions, documents show.
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