YAREN – Four refugees have agreed to resettle in Cambodia from Nauru, the ABC understands, amid reports the group has been secretly flown to Australia.

Cambodia has agreed to take refugees from Nauru who tried to reach Australia by boat.

It is believed an Iranian couple and a single Iranian man along with an ethnic Rohingya man from Myanmar have accepted the Federal Government’s offer to resettle in the south-east Asian nation.

An asylum seeker advocate said the group arrived in Darwin on Sunday and was waiting in the Darwin Airport Lodge immigration facility.

The advocate said it was interesting the facility was being used, adding that it had not been used in months.

Fairfax Media reports the group arrived in Darwin on Sunday and is waiting in immigration accommodation before flying to Cambodia.

Fairfax says Cambodian officials – who insist on vetting the refugees before their arrival – have not been informed about the shift of the group from Nauru to Australia.

“We don’t have any official information about this,” Kerm Sarin of the Ministry of Interior’s Refugee Department told the Phnom Penh Post, adding that a government delegation that visited Nauru in April to assess the refugees’ applications had not yet submitted their report to the government.

Asked about the secret flight, a spokeswoman for Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said: “Arrangements are ongoing and we haven’t been and won’t be commenting further”.

Dutton’s office has refused to provide details of the group, if they have arrived in Darwin or when they will arrive in Cambodia.

The ABC understands one of the people was offered $10,000 to take the deal, along with paid employment, free accommodation in Phnom Penh and a permanent visa.

The Federal Government’s offers to those on Nauru have also including language training and health insurance.

Flights have departed Nauru’s international airport for Brisbane and Darwin over the past fortnight.

The Phnom Penh Post reports an Iranian refugee on Nauru saying the group had said they were travelling to Australia.

“They just disappeared for a while and they said that they are going to Cambodia, but they are in Australia now and waiting for the flight to take them to Cambodia,” the refugee told the newspaper.

The first charter flight from Nauru was expected to leave as early as April 20 but it is believed this was delayed because few refugees accepted the Cambodia deal.

Last month Australian immigration officials on Nauru told refugees and asylum seekers they could fly to Cambodia as early as April 20 if they accepted up to $15,000 and offers of accommodation, food, training and other benefits to give up their hopes of living in Australia to go to Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest nations with a poor human rights record.

Refugee advocates say among the promises made to asylum seekers was to have their applications for refugee status fast-tracked if they agreed to go to Cambodia.

The Abbott government announced in Tuesday’s budget that Australia’s aid to Cambodia would be left intact, despite slashing aid to other south-east Asian nations.

The Government late last year announced the overall aid budget was being cut by $1 billion.

Foreign aid to Africa has been cut by 70 per cent and the contribution to Indonesia nearly halved.

But Cambodia, Nauru and Papua New Guinea – all of which resettle or process asylum seekers or refugees on behalf of Australia – have largely been unaffected by the cuts.

Refugee advocates point out that if only four refugees agree to make the journey to Cambodia the cost to Australian taxpayers will be well in excess of $10 million per head.