A Phnom Penh police official on Monday said his unit had started investigating the case of a Japanese man with Cambodian citizenship suspected by Thai authorities of running a baby-trafficking operation using surrogate mothers in Bangkok.
“Our side is working on the case. I am conducting the investigation,” said Keo Thea, chief of the municipal police force’s anti-human trafficking bureau.
The Bangkok Post reported on Saturday that Thai police would be visiting Cambodia “soon” to meet an assistant of Japanese national Mitsutoki Shigeta, 24, who remains at large, and four infants he is suspected of fathering as part of his suspected trafficking operation.
Mr. Thea said he knew nothing about such a visit and declined to discuss the case further.
According to Thai media, police in Bangkok say they have used DNA samples to confirm that Mr. Shigeta is the father of at last nine infants born to various women and recently found in a Bangkok apartment block.
They say he used his Cambodian passport to travel from Thailand to Cambodia several times this year, occasionally with different infants bearing his family name.
