Decision to Promote Telecom Chief Defended

(Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

March 24, 2013
By Phok Dorn and Denise Hruby
The Cambodia Daily

The Minister of Posts and Tele­com­munications yesterday defended the appointment of the former Tele­com Cambodia (T.C.) director- general to the position of an undersecretary despite ongoing investigations into his involvement in alleged corrupt acts and embezzlement of funds at the state-owned company.

About 300 staff from T.C. went on strike last month to demand Lao Saroeun’s removal. After the strike, Mr. Saroeun stood down from his position, claiming he had gone on sick leave.

On Wednesday, Transparency International and three local rights groups raised questions over Mr. Saroeun’s new appointment and demanded that the ministry offer an explanation for its actions.

Speaking at a news conference yesterday, Telecommunications Min­ister So Khun said that his ministry had found no evidence against Mr. Saroeun.

“We don’t have a document to show that he is corrupt, like a document he signed to take money from T.C. We can’t accuse him without evidence,” Mr. Khun said, add­ing that the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) was still conducting its own investigation into Mr. Saroeun.

“The ACU is still investigating, and I don’t know when they’ll be finished. But if they find that Mr. Saroeun is corrupt, we will punish him according to the law,” he said.

“He was the former director-general of T.C., so we have to have a position for him. I can’t let him down,” Mr. Khun said to explain the decision to promote Mr. Saroeun while a corruption investigation was under way.

But Kol Preap, executive director of Transparency International Cam­bodia, said that Mr. Saroeun should not have been appointed before he was cleared of all crimes.

“The internal investigation of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommu­nications is not reliable, the public doesn’t consider this truly independent. In this case, we still need to hear from the ACU, which is more reliable,” Mr. Preap said.

At the annual meeting of the Mini­stry of Posts and Telecommuni­ca­tions last week, secretary of state Sa­­­rak Khan said that in 2012, Tel­ecom Cambodia—which provides commercial phone and Internet services—made losses of more than $40 million during the five years that Mr. Saroeun headed the company.

But Mr. Saroeun yesterday of­fered a different financial report—which he claimed had been audited by KPMG—that shows that T.C. made roughly $78 million in gross prof­its from 2008 through 2012. “I don’t have any worries about the ACU investigation be­cause I am not cor­rupt,” Mr. Saroeun said. “I don’t know which re­port Excellency Sa­­rak Khan was looking at. I want to cl­arify that T.C. did not lose any money.”