Cambodia's natural resources looted by "kleptocratic mafia"

The close-knit circle first dynasty of Cambodia

Cambodian elite and army accused of illegal logging racket

• 'PM and family complicit as troops loot forests'
• Watchdog says world's donors turn blind eye

Friday June 1, 2007
John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian (UK)

Cambodia is being systematically stripped of its natural assets by a small elite of politicians, relatives of its prime minister, and businessmen working with the army the government's former official independent forestry watchdog said yesterday.

Global Witness, the UK-based human rights and environment group which monitored Cambodia's forests for the government until it was thrown out of the country in 2006, says logging is in the hands of a "small kleptocratic mafia". In a report today they accuse officials and senators of misappropriating public assets, extortion, tax avoidance, looting the forests and managing an extensive illicit economy under the eyes of the international donors who turn a blind eye but give the country $600m (£300m) annually in aid.

The group claims to have uncovered evidence of heavily armed soldiers from an elite army unit with close connections to senior politicians, including the prime minister, Hun Sen. Brigade 70, says the report, transports logs and other smuggled goods from all over Cambodia for tycoons and politicians, and the timber is sold to Vietnam or sent to China.

"These timber trafficking activities are worth many millions a year and the profits are split between timber traders and the brigade commanders," it says. Brigade 70, which has a reputation for violence, is also hired by Cambodian industrialists to smuggle alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, perfume, drugs and construction materials for prominent tycoons, says the report.

"The armed forces are major players in logging and drug trafficking. They have kept up an assault on the country's forests that does not pretend to be legitimate. Many units are stationed around forests and carry out illegal operations geared towards enriching their commanders."

Yesterday the Cambodian government declined to comment on the report. In the past it has threatened to prosecute the group. Letters sent to people identified in the report, including the prime minister, were not answered.

Cambodia has one of the world's worst deforestation rates. Since 1970, its virgin forest cover has fallen from over 70% to 3.1%. Global Witness investigated illegal logging in Cambodia and its links with corruption and human rights abuses in 1995. The group was in 1999 appointed independent monitor of Cambodia's forestry crime monitoring programme with the help of the UK government and other international donors, and Prime Minister Hun Sen staked his job on the crackdown on logging.

In the 1990s illegal logging was so rife that the IMF cancelled a $120m loan and the World Bank suspended aid.

The government suspended commercial logging but in 2003, Global Witness reported a rebound in the illegal trade which it linked to relatives of the prime minister and Brigade 70. Following threats of prosecution by the government the organisation was ejected from Cambodia in 2006 and the prime minister declared that the group was "finished".

The new report, which was compiled in London from material gathered secretly in Cambodia, estimates the trade could be worth "tens of millions of dollars a year." It accuses Hun Sen of "building a shadow state on patronage, coercion and corruption" with family members actively involved in corrupt business dealings. It says the armed forces are involved in high-level deals via secret military development zones that cover 700,000 hectares (1.7m acres) of forest and other land.