I know a lot about cambodia and banking/business ask me anything.

[CambodiaPro]

Hello everyone i have been lurking in the forum for a while now and i just decided to register.

I have been living in cambodia, i have been involved with many business, i have relatives working in banks here and i personally know most of the relevant people in the country both in business and politically.

I decided to make this "ask me anything" regarding cambodia. I might be slow in replying but i will. Feel free to ask me just about anything, visa, bank accounts, company registration, taxes, customs, buying cambodian nationality, real estate, living here, etc..
Most likely i have direct experience.

Cambodia deserves it's nickname as the kingdom of wonder in my opinion, a very friendly non CRS country with a dollarized economy and a very flexible attitude towards most things.
I mean here you can literally pay a general to shoot an RPG against cows so many things can happen.

 

[JackAlabama]

Hi there, cool post!
I think Cambodia is an interesting place and Ive been there pre-cov. How is the situation now? Is it open? Under what circumstances can I get in cov-wise?
What kind of long term visa is available (think of permanent residency).
Is it cryptocurrency friendly.

 

[Kol019201]

I mean here you can literally pay a general to shoot an RPG against cows

How much for that?

 

[CambodiaPro]

You can come but you need to quarantine and it's a bit expensive. 300$ in tests and the hotel will likely be almost 100$ a day including food. Some hotels accept food delivery but you better check the Facebook groups about it. There are cheaper hotels available even a government dormitory that should be free (but is awful). Visa is still easy many agencies can take care of all that and you don't need to leave to renew. If you are over 55 you can just get a retirement visa for around 180$ an year and never leave. If you are younger (youngest i know that got it is 41) but have stable income you could still get it with a bit of discussion but below 55 it's not guaranteed. For younger is still easy even without job or business but it will cost you around 400$/year (visa, work permit, freelance papers) for an agency to take care of all of that stress free.
If you have a company abroad you can register a representative office, that is fast, easy and cheap.
The only important thing is when you fly in you MUST ask for the ordinary/business visa on arrival not the tourist visa or you can't renew it without leaving after a couple of months.
The business visa is 1 month 30$ and you can get a 6 months "looking for business to do/work" visa extension. After that agency.
Or if you are a baller in 30 days you can buy cambodian nationality (exept if you are African or afghan, still possible but more complex).

Still the visa situation is fluid right now because of covid so you should follow the Cambodia visa groups on facebook since they keep up with the news better than me.

Regarding covid unfortunately we used to have 0 deaths and no local spread at all but last month a Chinese hooker bribed her way out of the quarantine hotel and she had covid ( probably from the plane or in some transit airport) Now we have around 50 local cases a day but the government is trying it's best to contain it. Still bars are open.

 

[CambodiaPro]

How much for that?

Shooting the rpg is around 300$ last time i checked (discounts if you shoot a lot) i don't know the going price for a cow now.
Anyway you will likely miss it and get frustrated and spend a small fortune in rpgs just to get it on target while the poor animal is going nuts. Sounds fun but in reality is just... Weird.

 

[Silvio]

Welcome to the forum!

Looks like already it's an interesting thread. Any shortcuts to nationality or you gotta shell the 250k?

 

[CambodiaPro]

Welcome to the forum!

Looks like already it's an interesting thread. Any shortcuts to nationality or you gotta shell the 250k?

Before you could get it for as little as 40k but it was always a shady affair. Now it is clean but it will cost you almost exactly 300k as you can't do it directly yet (serious lawyer or some government facilitator). However now it's fast and safe. (Criminal record, Money in escrow, 30 days, done. And you can even go to meet the king if you want to wait for the yearly ceremonywhere he hands over the certificates).
I tried to find some shenanigans but it seems difficult now, so many chinese got it recently that the government hiked the price massively as chinese use cambodia to bring in cash to clean.
However I think that the situation will change again soon as they increased it too much and even the chinese are thinking twice. Personally i think that something will come up soon as getting 100 times 100k is better than 3 times at 300k.
In theory you could bypass it by asking a relative of the king, many of them aren't wealthy at all (and there is really a lot of them) as the king here is almost a monk. But since the king can just stamp a paper and give you nationality (which he did already a lot of times) now with the big price hike it might come back as a way to get it.

Anyway the nationality law should be simplified soon.

I am quite fascinated by the fact that you can buy nationality here so i will look a bit more into ways around the big cost.

 

[PiersBlack]

Hello, one of my agents recently proposed Cambodia as a feasible option for BVI company banking.

Is this something really doable (remotely) or they just wanna take their big fee for nothing? Would you recommend Cambodia as a banking location? My first impression is that I might have big issues in the future moving that money out/around, considering it's Cambodia origin.

Thanks for opening this thread!

 

[CambodiaPro]

Hello, one of my agents recently proposed Cambodia as a feasible option for BVI company banking.

Is this something really doable (remotely) or they just wanna take their big fee for nothing? Would you recommend Cambodia as a banking location? My first impression is that I might have big issues in the future moving that money out/around, considering it's Cambodia origin.

Thanks for opening this thread!

That's interesting to hear. All banks i know ask you to be present for opening an account and i am not sure how that would be structured. However I am pretty sure that with some extra fee some bank managers might become more flexible.
Banks here are really friendly and easy to use. I would like to know which bank and how they plan to structure it all and i will check for you what the bank says about it. To be honest if that is something that works i am very interested to learn how to set it up so i don't mind spending some time on it.

 

[rainy]

1-2 years ago I went to some banks, Aba and Canadia, there and they told me - 'high liss cuntly'. Meaning, my passport is of a country with high risk and they wouldn't open me an account. What country? Cuba, Iran, North Korean are among those. But I'm from Russia. Unbeliviable. They haven't revised the list of high risk countries for several decades. The 1st country where I was told that.

Generally I liked it, I was there several times. But it's a 3rd world country, undeveloped, corrupt, durty, with lots of traffic, sometimes expensive, with lots of chinese who assume that it's now their home. Some ATMs only support visa and not master card. Products in the stores are too much expensive, there're almost no products except imported ones, and of bad quality or simply expensive, and usually in big packs. How locals can even afford them - no idea.

Shop vendor generally don't know how charge you with a bank card, it's something foreign to them. I'd give them a card and it'd go "we don't accept cards (and they will if I insist)", "this card reader only accepts Aba bank cards (that's not true, who can it even be?)", "this card reader doesn't support contactless payments (except yesterday and 2 days ago it did, here in this very shop, with other staff member)".

 

[fortunespeculator]

Can you name or give details of any agents need to get the business visa to 6 months after getting in.

 

[ecool]

Thank you for opening up for questions.

I'm looking for purchasing some real estate in Cambodia, not to resell but to rent. Unfortunately due to current travel restrictions is not possible to go there so I'm waiting to be able to travel there to start searching. Do you have any recommendations or do's/donts for buying real estate properties (to rent them later) as a foreigner?

 

[CambodiaPro]

1-2 years ago I went to some banks, Aba and Canadia, there and they told me - 'high liss cuntly'. Meaning, my passport is of a country with high risk and they wouldn't open me an account. What country? Cuba, Iran, North Korean are among those. But I'm from Russia. Unbeliviable. They haven't revised the list of high risk countries for several decades. The 1st country where I was told that.

Generally I liked it, I was there several times. But it's a 3rd world country, undeveloped, corrupt, durty, with lots of traffic, sometimes expensive, with lots of chinese who assume that it's now their home. Some ATMs only support visa and not master card. Products in the stores are too much expensive, there're almost no products except imported ones, and of bad quality or simply expensive, and usually in big packs. How locals can even afford them - no idea.

Shop vendor generally don't know how charge you with a bank card, it's something foreign to them. I'd give them a card and it'd go "we don't accept cards (and they will if I insist)", "this card reader only accepts Aba bank cards (that's not true, who can it even be?)", "this card reader doesn't support contactless payments (except yesterday and 2 days ago it did, here in this very shop, with other staff member)".

Russia should be no problem. Even iraq is fine. I guess you came across the wrong person. Plenty of Russians here. There was even a russian police officer (cambodian police! He probably bought the position) driving a Bentley.

Regarding the environment it's improving fast, don't think the riverside red light area is the norm here. Plenty of new high end areas.

About bank card acceptance it's easy to use it in all high end places and supermarkets but not in the local shops. But it's easily fixed, get a Wing app account and almost everyone will accept it. It's like a local payment service. Even the hold hag with a 1990s nokia can go to a nearby wing stall and cash it using the code and just about everyone knows how to use it. Still of course, cash is king here, which is good.

Prices are quite cheap for most things unless you are looking for high end imported goods. I find it amusing that it is sometimes cheaper to buy some food items at the restaurant than buying it's parts at a foreign supermarket. However here is now easy to buy order things from Taobao / TMall which is the super cheap chinese version of amazon. 9 days delivery from china by truck.
Still for entrainment prices are extremely low. Of course if you are looking for russian perogies it will be more expensive here but likely you will find them. There is even a new russian restaurant that opened last year.

 

[CambodiaPro]

Can you name or give details of any agents need to get the business visa to 6 months after getting in.

For the first 6 month visa is extremely easy anyone will do. For the yearly visa on facebook you can find "call Kim" which is a fairly good choice, "lucky lucky" is also one of the oldest visa agent in the business. Myself i haven't used an agent in quite a long time but those 2 are easy going, fairly priced and reliable.
Anyway because of the whole covid 19 situation now i reccomend to check with your nearest cambodian embassy also before flying as well as an agent.

 

[CambodiaPro]

I

Thank you for opening up for questions.

I'm looking for purchasing some real estate in Cambodia, not to resell but to rent. Unfortunately due to current travel restrictions is not possible to go there so I'm waiting to be able to travel there to start searching. Do you have any recommendations or do's/donts for buying real estate properties (to rent them later) as a foreigner?

Having myself a sizable real estate portfolio i know even a little too much about the topic... It's a very long subject. Anyway real estate here is still a good investment but it's not as brainless as it was 10 years ago, at that time you could pick any property and by now it would be worth 5 times more. Now with covid you could find some interesting distressed sales in particular in the hotel sector as chinese that leveraged themselves too much in the last 2 years with hotels are now feeling the pain of covid.

However it's just too much wide of a topic to write a post about it. ( going from the law, types of property titles, taxation, areas of interest, access to credit, agricultural land etc. Etc ....)

If you come here we can have a talk over dinner about it.

Anyway in a pinch just don't buy the overpriced condominiums built by chinese which are for chinese that need to launder money and don't listen to real estate suggestions from taxi drivers and hookers

 

[PiersBlack]

That's interesting to hear. All banks i know ask you to be present for opening an account and i am not sure how that would be structured. However I am pretty sure that with some extra fee some bank managers might become more flexible.
Banks here are really friendly and easy to use. I would like to know which bank and how they plan to structure it all and i will check for you what the bank says about it. To be honest if that is something that works i am very interested to learn how to set it up so i don't mind spending some time on it.

They wouldn't disclose the name of the bank unless I sent them my full info, docs, etc. first. But they did confirm it was fully remote and it would take 1-2 months. If you're interested to find out more you can PM me and I'll share the name of the services company (I can't PM). Maybe you can dig more on your own.

 

[rainy]

Russia should be no problem. Even iraq is fine. I guess you came across the wrong person. Plenty of Russians here. There was even a russian police officer (cambodian police! He probably bought the position) driving a Bentley.

What do you mean - shoud be? I'm telling you - they said "high risk country, won't open an account", in both banks. And they pulled it and read it from their rules, in front of me.

In Aba they would, but with a lot of additional documents and with draconian limitations (explanation of each transaction I'd make). Which is effectively the same as if they said no.

 

[rainy]

About bank card acceptance it's easy to use it in all high end places and supermarkets but not in the local shops.

No, cards are always a problem there. Salesmen are, often, unaware how to use them, let alone "contactless" payments. Or they'd be relactant to use them. When I'd show them that I could use their own card reader in a contractless manner, they'd become speachless for a few seconds. But some wouldn't allow me - it's prohibited to pay contractlessly! Noooooo!

 

[fortunespeculator]

W

For the first 6 month visa is extremely easy anyone will do. For the yearly visa on facebook you can find "call Kim" which is a fairly good choice, "lucky lucky" is also one of the oldest visa agent in the business. Myself i haven't used an agent in quite a long time but those 2 are easy going, fairly priced and reliable.
Anyway because of the whole covid 19 situation now i reccomend to check with your nearest cambodian embassy also before flying as well as an agent.

Whats the cost for both of them?

 

[CambodiaPro]

No, cards are always a problem there. Salesmen are, often, unaware how to use them, let alone "contactless" payments. Or they'd be relactant to use them. When I'd show them that I could use their own card reader in a contractless manner, they'd become speachless for a few seconds. But some wouldn't allow me - it's prohibited to pay contractlessly! Noooooo!

Now it's very common because of covid.
Visa had a large contactless campaign this year. All minimarts and supermarket chains take contactless now. Malls also. Other shops not so much, hit or miss. Restaurants is also hit or miss. But why are you so interested in cashless and cards anyway? Almost all atm take visa and mastercard and they are everywhere.