The admission provides the clearest public confirmation yet of the Cambodian ruling family's ties to Huione Group, a Phnom Penh-based conglomerate that US regulators say laundered at least $4 billion in illicit funds between August 2021 and January 2025.

Hun To's late father was the brother of former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who governed Cambodia for nearly four decades before stepping down in 2023 in favour of his son. Hun To has also previously faced allegations of heroin trafficking and links to organized crime, according to prior reporting by DLNews and Arab News. According to reports, the remaining 62% of Huione Pay was held by Li Xiong, the company's former chairman, who was extradited to China in April 2026 on charges related to transnational gambling and fraud. The combined disclosed stakes of Hun To (30%) and Li Xiong (62%) account for 92% of the company; the ownership of the remaining 8% has not been publicly established.

Hun To said in a statement reported by AFP that he "never received any profits, dividends or assets from that company" and received nothing when the company was liquidated in October 2025, following pressure from US sanctions. Huione Pay PLC had held a licence as a payment services institution in Cambodia.

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A Sanctions Campaign Years in the Making

The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, invoked Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act against Huione Group in May 2025, issuing an initial designation finding the group a "primary money laundering concern." That action, FinCEN's most powerful anti-money-laundering tool, culminated in a Final Rule in October 2025 that completed the regulatory process.

The Final Rule prohibited all US correspondent banking relationships with Huione-linked entities and required American financial institutions to block transactions that might benefit the group. The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office imposed complementary sanctions at the same time, though the precise UK legal instrument has not been independently confirmed.

FinCEN's investigation found that of the $4 billion in confirmed illicit proceeds, at least $37 million came from cyberheists attributed to North Korean state hackers, at least $36 million from crypto investment scams commonly called pig butchering (a fraud scheme in which victims are cultivated over weeks or months before being persuaded to invest in fake crypto platforms), and $300 million from other cyber fraud.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic placed Huione Group's total crypto inflows since 2014 at $98 billion, with its Telegram-based illicit marketplace, Haowang Guarantee, accounting for $24 billion to $27 billion in transactions across roughly 900,000 user accounts. A separate estimate cited by The Record placed the total figure at $49 billion in transactions since 2021; the discrepancy reflects different start dates used by each source. Telegram subsequently banned thousands of Haowang Guarantee accounts, forcing the marketplace offline and pushing users onto Huione's proprietary messaging platform, ChatMe.

FinCEN described Huione Group as "a critical node for laundering proceeds of cyber heists carried out by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

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A Purpose-Built System to Evade Oversight

Huione Group's infrastructure was not limited to payments. The conglomerate operated a proprietary blockchain called Huione Chain (also branded Xone Chain), a messaging application called ChatMe, and a stablecoin called USDH. Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to hold a fixed value, usually pegged to the US dollar. Huione's own promotional material for USDH stated that it "avoids the common freezing and transfer restrictions of traditional digital currencies and is not restricted by traditional regulatory agencies." The stablecoin was launched after Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, froze a Huione Pay wallet in July 2024 linked to North Korean theft proceeds. USDH currently operates across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Tron, and Huione's own chain. The group has publicly targeted a circulating supply of 10 billion USDH and more than one million wallet addresses by the end of 2026. Huione's own projections named exchanges HTX, Binance, and OKX as USDH listing targets, a detail that creates potential OFAC exposure risk for any platform that proceeds with such a listing.

"This should serve as a wake-up call for the broader financial ecosystem to strengthen the detection and disruption of cross-border laundering networks," said Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic, speaking in May 2025 on the initial FinCEN designation.

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Regional Fallout Spans South Asia, Africa, and Beyond

The human cost of Huione-adjacent operations extends well beyond Cambodia. UN and USAID estimates suggest scam compound operations across Southeast Asia generate between $12.5 billion and $19 billion annually, a figure that potentially represents up to 60% of Cambodia's GDP. Between 100,000 and 150,000 people are currently held in exploitative conditions inside Cambodian scam compounds.

Workers trafficked from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan have been forced to run crypto fraud operations targeting victims worldwide. Indian media reported approximately 5,800 crore rupees in restrained crypto assets as part of a coordinated April 2026 crackdown, with Indian enforcement agencies among the participants. A parallel US and UK operation restrained approximately $701.9 million linked to Huione-connected networks; it has not been confirmed whether these two figures refer to the same pool of assets or separate enforcement actions.

In Africa, pig butchering and crypto romance fraud schemes actively recruit and defraud users in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana. Chainalysis data from 2025 found that Chinese-language money-laundering networks moved $16.1 billion through crypto, a segment that likely includes conversion infrastructure running partly through African mobile money corridors. Direct links between Huione's infrastructure specifically and African networks remain less documented than the broader regional pattern.

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What Comes Next

Cambodia passed its first dedicated anti-scam law, the Law on Anti-Technology Fraud, on March 30, 2026, pending royal assent. The legislation carries prison terms of two to five years for individuals, with doubled penalties for organised groups. It came under significant international pressure after years of the Cambodian government framing scam operations as labour disputes, according to a 2025 US State Department report.

In April 2026, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Cambodian senator Kok An and 28 others for running scam compounds targeting Americans through crypto romance fraud. The Treasury described the action as part of a coordinated US and UK effort it characterised as "the largest action ever targeting cybercriminal networks in Southeast Asia." Americans lost an estimated $10 billion to Southeast Asian scam operations in 2024, a 66% increase year over year.

Hun To's public confirmation of his Huione Pay stake provides the latest evidence that a sanctioned, purpose-built laundering and scam infrastructure was operating with structural proximity to a sitting head of government's family. His claim that he received no financial benefit will likely face scrutiny if international investigations are extended to cover the political network surrounding Huione Group. The deeper question raised by the Huione case is not about any one individual's stake but about the systemic conditions that allowed such an infrastructure to take root, scale, and operate for years with links reaching into the highest levels of Cambodian political life.