The many-armed Sok An: Hun Sen's ubiquitous right hand man

One cartoonist’s view of the many-armed Sok An. He is currently the Permanent Vice Chairman of the Supreme Council for State Reform, Chairman of the Council for Administrative Reform, Chairman of the National Tourism Authority. He is also Vice Chairman of the Centralist Democratic Institute (CDI), the Asia Pacific Institute; Chief of the Apasara Authority, Chief of the National Land Dispute Authority, Chief of the Cambodia Training Board, Chief of the Royal Academy, Chief of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a member of the Council of Royal Administration and Chief of the State Investment Board on Rubber Enterprise. In his spare time he also finds time to chair the Cambodian National Scout Association.

Excerpt from "Country for sale"
Global Witness

Sok An is the current deputy prime minister for Cambodia and chairman of the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA). Like many of his peers in the in the Cambodian Peoples’ Party (CPP), Sok An began his career as a bureaucrat during Vietnam’s occupation in the early 1980s and rose to prominence alongside Prime Minister Hun Sen. An astute political operator, he remained by Hun Sen’s side throughout the CPP’s ruthless consolidation of power and is now one of the prime minister’s closest allies. Their relationship was recently strengthened through the arranged marriage of Sok An’s son Sok Puthyvuth to Hun Sen’s daughter Hun Mali.

Global Witness has written about Sok An previously in his capacity as co-signatory on many of the original agreements for logging concessionaires in Cambodia. These concession agreements formed the basis of the disastrous destruction of forests which followed, at great cost to Cambodia’s environment and little benefit to Cambodia’s economy.

As the regime’s second-in-command, Sok An holds a number of other important governmental positions, so many in fact that he has been likened to a many-armed Hindu god, due to his tendency to have a hand in everything. It came as little surprise that, when the CNPA was established in 1998, Sok An was elected as its chairman. Since then he has presided over all contracts awarded to oil companies, acting as the point person for potential investors.