A Poipet casino has detained 11 Cambodian employees in its hotel complex for more than a week as it investigates a possible cheating ring suspected of skimming some $2.5 million, a casino manager said Sunday, alarming human rights activists who called the detentions illegal.
The employees at Golden Crown Casino are being questioned in a bid to break open the suspected cheating network, said Soth Kosal, human resources chief at the casino and hotel complex.
Soth Kosal said the casino wants to know who gave the orders and how the money was siphoned out of the casino’s coffers.
But a human rights group says the employees—most of them card dealers—are being detained illegally and that it has received reports of torture.
According to relatives of six detained employees, they have been subject to torture, including the use of electric shock, beatings and forced nudity, since they were first detained on Aug 20, said Dieb Sivutha, executive director of the Cambodian Children Development Organization for Protection of Human Rights.
Those claims have not been substantiated, and Dieb Sivutha said Sunday that the employees denied any ill treatment when he interviewed them over the weekend at the casino.
He said the 11 employees were kept in an air-conditioned room and showed no visible signs of torture, though he was not permitted by casino management to make a full inspection. He also said the management has forced the employees to pay them money.
Family members have not been allowed to visit the employees, he added.
Alerted to the detentions over the weekend, police moved to check on the employees Sunday, but management denied them entry into the casino and told authorities to return today, said Nuth Ly, chief of O’Chrou district police.
“I have only heard that the workers stole the casino’s money,” Nuth Ly said. He said it was impossible Sunday to determine whether the employees had been illegally detained.
Soth Kosal denied that the employees were mistreated and downplayed the detentions, saying the workers merely had been asked to stay.
“We have provided them food and accommodation. We have not tortured them,” he said. He added that the workers had confessed to cheating the casino, and that the casino will file a criminal complaint with local authorities after determining who masterminded the scheme.
“We don’t detain them, we only ask them not to go out of the casino, because we want to investigate further into their network,” he said.
Soth Kosal said casino management had discovered more than $2.5 million in missing profits.
“I don’t know when we will let them out. Maybe after we finish our investigation,” he said.
Dieb Sivutha’s organization is drawing up a complaint for* the Interior Ministry in Phnom Penh alleging illegal detention and extortion of workers’ money and also has asked provincial prosecutors to investigate.
