Four Vietnamese charged with drug trafficking in Cambodia

Local newspaper the Khmer Times reported that Nguyen Thi Le, Bui Thi Lo, Truong Thi Mai, and Ha Vo Khong were working in a Vietnamese-owned casino in the Cambodian border city of Bavet.

It quoted a senior police officer as saying the anti-drug police arrested the four last Friday following a tip-off from an Israeli man who had been part of their alleged drug network and was arrested on February 3.

The police said a raid on their rented apartment in Bavet Kandal village in Svay Rieng Province netted two large packages of meth weighing nearly half a kilo, 40 ecstasy pills, a scale, and five phones.

"They were drug distributors, and had been selling drugs to users gambling in casinos and night clubs on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border," the officer in charge of the anti-drug operation said.

The suspects are being held pending their trial. If found guilty, they face up to 10 years in prison.

Vietnam and Cambodia signed a memorandum of understanding on cross-border drug crime enforcement in 2017 after Cambodian anti-drug officials visited Hanoi to seek funding for a drug rehabilitation center in Sihanoukville.