Colombo Port city comes into focus as transnational crime networks surface

New Delhi: Sri Lanka is fast emerging on the radar of global law enforcement agencies as a potential node for transnational cybercrime networks, particularly those linked to Chinese crime syndicates active in Southeast Asia.

Senior Sri Lankan police officials have cautioned the country's leadership to act soon or risk allowing the situation to evolve into a full-scale national security crisis, according to people familiar with the issue.

The Lankan police are concerned following the abduction and murder of a Chinese national, whose body was discovered on July 23. Investigators believe the killing was not random, but a targeted operation executed by members of an international Chinese syndicate who had entered Sri Lanka specifically to eliminate him, one of the people cited earlier said.


Also read: India-Sri Lanka focus on infrastructure projects; updating FTA to boost Comprehensive Partnership

The victim, operating under the alias "Hao Pon", was embedded in global cyber fraud networks, according to the Lankan police. While he entered Sri Lanka on a forged Cambodian passport, a second passport from Suriname bearing the same photograph but a different identity was later recovered, another person said.

According to the police, Hao Pon relocated earlier this year from Cambodia, where he allegedly ran cyber scam under the cover of legitimate businesses. In Sri Lanka, he had begun laying the groundwork to replicate that model, the person said.

The Lankan police suspect that he fled Cambodia after a fallout with another criminal network over unpaid gains from fraud, reportedly amounting to millions of dollars. That network, police say, tracked him to Lanka and eliminated him after kidnapping him from the Colombo Port city on July 22.