Funcinpec Widow Files ACU Complaint for Lost Land

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Wednesday, 18 May 2011

“So now why does Ho Sok’s wife file a complaint against us?”

The wife of a royalist general who was killed in the 1997 coup has filed a complaint with the national Anti-Corruption Unit, saying a group of officials and judges conspired to sell her husband’s land after he died.

Chea Kim, the wife of Ho Sok, who was a Funcinpec secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior and a three-star general, says 29 government officials and six judges worked together to sell 13 hectares of land in Kandal province in 1998.

Ho Sok and other Funcinpec generals and officials were either killed in fighting or executed during the two-day coup in July 1997, as then co-prime minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party seized power.

In her May 6 complaint, obtained by VOA Khmer, Chea Kim states that the Supreme Court overturned a 2007 decision that awarded the land to her.

Senior Cambodian prosecutor arrested by new anti-graft body

Nov 30, 2010
DPA

Phnom Penh - Officials from Cambodia's fledgling Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) have arrested a senior provincial prosecutor on unspecified charges, national media reported Tuesday.

It marks the first known arrest of a public official by the ACU, which was launched earlier this year to tackle pervasive corruption in public life.

The Cambodia Daily newspaper said Top Chan Sereyvuth, the senior prosecutor in Pursat province, was arrested early Monday.

ACU head Om Yentieng, who led the operation, refused to disclose the grounds on which the prosecutor was being held.

Top Chan Sereyvuth was last year named in media reports as being involved in a long-running land dispute case that was mysteriously moved to his court in Pursat from another province where he had previously worked as a judge.

The head of an organization that was contesting the land told media at the time that Top Chan Sereyvuth was to receive 2 hectares of land once the case was resolved.

Global graft monitor Transparency International ranks Cambodia among the world's most corrupt nations.

It took the government 15 years to promulgate an anti-corruption law, whose eventual passage followed years of pleading from donors who annually give hundreds of millions of dollars.

One recent survey found that Cambodians regard the judiciary as the most corrupt institution in the country.

After being caught for accepting bribe, Ly Vouchleng can still get a position at the Council of Ministers: It pays to be corrupt in Cambodia!

Ly Vouchleng (L) and You Bunleng (R), her replacement after she was fired for accepting bribes

Legal post goes to ousted Court of Appeal president

Monday, 23 February 2009
Written by Chrann Chamroeun and Robbie Corey-Boulet The Phnom Penh Post

TIE TO THE KRT
You Bunleng, co-investigating judge at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, was appointed to replace Ly Vouchleng at the Court of Appeal after her removal. He initially said he might not be able to remain at the tribunal but eventually decided to stay on.

Ly Vouchleng's appointment to the Council of Ministers comes 17 months after allegations of corruption resulted in her dismissal.

LY Vouchleng has been appointed as legal counsel to the Council of Ministers some 17 months after a corruption scandal led to her removal from her post as president of the Court of Appeal, Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan told the Post Sunday.

A royal decree issued in August 2007 ousted Ly Vouchleng from the Court of Appeal in response to allegations that the court had been bribed into releasing two human trafficking suspects.

Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith defended the new appointment as "legal" and declined to comment on the past corruption case, deferring questions about that to "the person who decided to appoint her", whom he said he could not name.

Phay Siphan said he did not know who approved the appointment and could not say whether past allegations of wrongdoing levied against her had figured in the decision.

"I just know that she was appointed to the position of legal counsel at the Council of Ministers and that her background is in legal expertise," he said.

Ly Vouchleng could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Kek Galabru, president of the rights group Licadho, said she had not heard of the appointment but that any decision to place Ly Vouchleng in a government post would be "difficult to understand" in light of the government's claims to be actively rooting out corruption.

"I feel very sorry if there really is a new appointment of Ly Vouchleng," she told the Post Sunday.