SARAWAK police have opened a “preliminary inquiry” into the travel and subsequent detention of 40 young Sarawakians in a provincial Cambodian jail late last year over possible human-trafficking offences.

State CID chief Dennis Leong said today that the preliminary inquiry was to establish if there was enough evidence to call for a full investigation.

He said initial findings found some of the young Sarawakians “were not first-timers”.

“Some had been there before,” Leong said after witnessing the handing over of duty by retiring Kuching district police chief Ng Ah Lek to his deputy, Ismail Mahmood, at the Kuching district police headquarters in Simpang Tiga.

Ismail is now acting district chief until Ng’s replacement reports for duty.

Leong said the fact that some of the Sarawakians had been there before to allegedly undertake the jobs linked to what the Cambodian police had accused them of – illegal online gambling – could complicate attempts to classify the case as human trafficking.

He said police hoped to interview more detainees and wrap the inquiry in “a couple of weeks’ time”.

Forty-seven Malaysians – 40 from Sarawak, the peninsula (4) and Sabah (3) – had claimed they were “cheated” by a recruitment agency into going to Cambodia under the guise of securing high-paying hotel jobs there.

They were offered salaries of between US$1,200 (RM4,884) and US$1,500 a month to wait tables.

They said when they landed in Siem Reap, they were picked up and driven to two multi-storey villas a few kilometres apart in the border city of Poipet.

Cambodian police had, on December 11, raided the villas in an illegal online gambling operation.

The Khmer Times, quoting Poipet deputy police chief Sok Bora, had reported that the Malaysians and their eight Chinese minders had been under observation by the police prior to the raid.

Bora had also reportedly said the Malaysians and Chinese nationals “were part of a foreign mafia hiding in Cambodia to run an illegal gambling operation online”.

Police reportedly caught the Malaysians “in the act of operating their illegal betting business” and police seized a number of computers, mobile phones and “other tools of the trade”.

In a parallel investigation, the Sarawak police’s Commercial Crime Department had picked up and sought remand orders for a trio, including a woman, suspected to have cheated the Malaysians with bogus job offers.

One of the three, a 35 year-old male Kuching resident had his four-day remand order extended by three days today.

Magistrate Faelly Jeffrey Lanjungan approved the extension when the suspect was brought to court this morning upon the expiry of the first remand order.

The other two were also remanded after police picked them up last Sunday at their homes in Traffic Garden and Taman Chung Hua.

Their remand order expires tomorrow.

Police said more arrests are expected.

Last week, Wisma Putra and the Sarawak government had intervened to seek the release of the Malaysians locked up in the Banteay Meanchey provincial prison on charges of cheating, and initiating and carrying out illegal online gambling.

Apart from Wisma Putra officials, Sarawak leaders had also gone to Cambodia to discuss the detainees’ release.

All 47 Malaysians were then released and arrived in Malaysia on February 17 after spending more than 60 days in jail. – February 28, 2019.