A committee of inspection could be appointed to oversee the winding up of three e-gaming companies linked to a Cambodian national sanctioned by the UK and US.

Ableton Prestige Global Ltd, Aperia (IoM) Ltd and Amiga Entertainment Ltd were placed into liquidation at a high court hearing in June this year.

The three companies had been raided by police in March as a part of an international money laundering inquiry.

Ableton’s beneficial owner was named at June’s liquidation hearing as Chen Zhi, head of the Prince Group, a Cambodian-based conglomerate accused by the US authorities of being a transnational criminal organisation.

A meeting of creditors and contributors of Ableton, Aperia and Amiga has been called for the purpose of nominating a liquidator and appointing a committee of inspection.

That meeting will be held at Kensington House on Bucks Road, Douglas, on December 15.

Made up of a company’s creditors, the role of a committee of inspection is to oversee the liquidator’s conduct of the winding up.

Adrian Hyde and Andrew Paul Shimmin were appointed provisional liquidators and deemed official receivers at the hearing in June.

The civil court also appointed a receiver for allied corporate trust Abundance Ltd.

Police executed a search warrant at the offices of Ableton, Aperia IoM and Amiga Entertainment on Ridgeway Street, Douglas, in March this year in relation to what the Constabulary described as a ‘large-scale international money laundering investigation’. Inquiries are ongoing.

Two people were arrested and released on police bail.

It has been reported that following the raids, dozens of Chinese nationals working for Ableton and Amiga had their visas revoked.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office announced in October that it was taking the largest-ever action targeting cybercriminal networks in South East Asia.

Sweeping sanctions have been imposed on 146 targets with the Prince Group, which is alleged to operate scam compounds responsible for industrial scale cyberfraud operations targeting victims around the world.

Among those placed on the sanctions list is Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi.

Another individual added to the sanctions list is Chen Xiuling, aka Karen Cheng, who is reported to have been a director of Amiga Entertainment.

June’s winding up hearing was told that three island-based e-gaming companies formed a joint structure with Ableton at the top of the group in a trust beneficially owned by Chen Zhi and his wife Li Caiyun.

Neither the companies nor their employees had made any admission of wrong doing.

But they said their ability to trade had been curtailed due to the companies’ assets in the Isle of Man being restrained, and they had therefore applied to the court for a winding up order.

Deemster John Needham said the circumstances regarding the winding up were ‘rather unusual’.

On the same day as the US announced sanctions against the Prince Group, two homes in the Isle of Man owned by an associate of Chen Zhi were raided in an FBI-led operation.