The Ministry of Commerce Corruption,Tep Bopha Rules: Opinion by Kok Sap

Cham Prasidh and his wife, the powerful Lok Chumteav Tep Bopha Prasidh

24/3/2010
Opinion by Kok Sap
Originally posted at http://khamerlogue.wordpress.com

Old saying,” sleep with dog get fleas,” so as we see as it happened in the Ministry of Commerce that affirmed Shakespeare famous line”to be or not to be”. Family ties are the essence to grow rich in Cambodia systematic nepotic and despotic government. It appears true as Global Witness has reported Cambodia Family Tree seems getting stronger and bigger than before in the business to sell Cambodia for profits.

We remember on 15 March 2005 when Dr. Cham Prasidh (at birth as Hong You Tekleng and Prasidh was given to him by Yuon bo doi), was miffed with Hun Sen inability to stop corruption by entrusting the corruptive Sok An to draft the laws. He threatened and vowed to quit at the end of 2005 if corruption was unresolved but Tep Bopha, the man-eater tigress, would not allow him to do so. In the end he had not followed her order to stay in the job but to become the nouveau filthy rich in a flash.

In the last five years as a Sino descent, Prasidh is no dummy. Not only he adapts to systematic corruption but becomes Sok An relative through their children marriage. So often he accompanies Hun Sen in trips abroad. Now he is not only unscrupulous but enjoying the privilege tremendously to be in the same sacred Sok An-Hun Sen circle of big fat Gau Prey.

It’s been said about Cambodia present political clique; if the husband were a captain then the wife must be a colonel. It appears relevant in Prasidh case, the multi-millionaire and senior Minister of Commerce. He may be the minister on the book but the real decision maker and powerhouse in all daily affairs at the ministry is Madame Tep Bopha. She’s the minister’s former elder sister-in-law but turned official wife when his brother died. She’s known as the tigress of Cham Chao fortress. Her protégé and confidante is Ms. Cham Nimul, a US business degree holder, with the master key to her papa secret safe, appointment schedule and important dossiers. Her official job is the director of her papa cabinet. But literally speaking, she is the designated minister who runs the ministry and answers to none below her papa. How nice for Prasidh to have his wife and daughter run and look after his business in the ministry.

Man-eater Tep Bopha is a control freak and overbearing boss. She can order around any staff from the ministry to run her errands or personal businesses on state time. Those who satisfied her insatiable desire and power hunger would be elevated through rank in office that the person never had to show up at work but at Cham Chao fortress, instead. She lives lavishly off her acquired wealth from obscure sources. Her luxurious multimillion dollar compound is wired and equipped with short circuit cameras in every conspicuous corner. She runs her servants via intercom. Besides her sizeable expensive automobile fleet, she wears expensive exquisite jewelries and outfits that made former Queen Monique unnoticeable.

In 2007 when I visited Wat Chompous Kha-aek near Phnom Penh, I heard the story that Tep Bopha had mistakenly tossed her over $20,000 diamond ring in the trashes. She was crying her eyes out all day. So Prasidh asked around if was there any holy monk practicing Hindu-ayurvedic mantra and fortune telling. He frantically went to see a Yuon mixed monk living at Wat Chompous Kha-aek.
By luck, the monk was innocently saying she should look at her trashes first before declared permanent loss. After she found her ring, she dispatched the young monk to visit and give her holy water bath plus magical love potion to keep Prasidh in a short leash.

Monk received handsomely financial reward and become her regular visitor at the fortress. Soon after that,the Young monk aged barely 25 was elevated to the title of Somdech Vanaradh is equally as the provincial level religious sect chief. Many of foxy ladies in Phnom Penh including Annie Sok An and Bun Rany followed suit and became this holy man loyal worshippers too.

With enormous wealth at disposal, the subordinates and officials treat the tigress Tep Bopha as equal as to Hun Sen’s wife. She shops at top designer boutiques in Phnom Penh or in Singapore. Her escorts are members of ministry staff whom she personally assigned and selected to be her daily errand maids. She frequents the expensive super market in Phnom Penh for groceries and house-needs.

From times to times, the tigress Tep Bopha appears at the public ceremonies or inauguration in Prasidh place. She is vested power to sign deals with foreign investors. She owns special economic zones and special businesses that she needs no salary from her husband payroll. Interestingly, this man-eater has not only pawed her way to the prominence but has steadily gained her social notoriety. She has secured her husband job which will soon pass it down to her daughter in one of these days.

This may be the reason that Prasidh no longer criticizes Sok An not to mention Hun Sen. If not soon but down in the line, the 30 or so old time ministers will end up sharing blood line with Hun Sen or Sok An in one way to the other. Through associative and distributive relations: Sok An’s wife is related to Hun Sen’s wife through marriage so is Tep Bopha’s kid; henceforth, if Sok An related to Hun Sen through his kid relations therefore the same goes for Prasidh whose kid is related to Sok An by CPP tradition. The same connector will make Hun Sen a relative to Prasidh as well. This is the way CPP elites stick to powerful posts by exploiting their own kid emotional and relationship growth.

US Provides Training To Curb Corruption [-Chak Teuk Leu Kbal Tea?]

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
17 February 2010

The US on Wednesday provided training to 62 Cambodian officials in an effort to combat widespread national corruption.

The US estimates Cambodia loses $500 million a year to the practices of kickbacks, bribery and other forms of corruption.

The three-day training will “really influence a change to the quality of our work,” said Om Yienteng, a senior government adviser and head of the nation’s anti-corruption unit.

The Council of Ministers passed a much-anticipated anti-corruption law in November but has yet to send it to the National Assembly for debate and passage into law.

Thai Prosecution reveals how the Shinawatras hid and multiplied their assets while in power [-Is this the case of Hun Xen's family also?]

(Photo: Reuters)

WEB OF INTRIGUE

November 23, 2009
The Nation

Prosecution reveals how the Shinawatras hid and multiplied their assets while in power

Would you cheat your son out of Bt3 billion? That could happen if your assistant was in a hurry to cover up something very important to you.

That was what the prosecution in the Bt76-billion asset seizure case against ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra told the Supreme Court last week.

The story was part of the prosecution's detailed argument that Thaksin and his ex-wife, Pojaman na Pombejra, did own altogether 46.87 per cent of Shin Corp shares worth more than Bt69 billion while the former held the country's highest office from 2001-2006.

The alleged cover-up of massive wealth was in blatant violation of Article 100(3) of the National Counter-Corruption Commission Act of 1999, which bars public office holders and their spouses from owning shares in companies holding state concessions.

In this case, Shin Corp was the holding company for Advanced Info Service (AIS) and Shin Satellite, which enjoyed government concessions for lucrative cellular and satellite service businesses.

Back in 2000, Thaksin and Pojaman were busy preparing to hide their multibillion-baht assets ahead of the general election.

After winning the election by a landslide, they could have sold off the assets or put them under a "blind" trust to comply with the law, but these options were never used.

Instead, a highly complex web of offshore and onshore entities and nominees was used to conceal their tremendous wealth.

Behind the scenes, the motives were multifaceted, ranging from tax avoidance to election campaign financing and other political reasons.

The entire process of concealing such massive wealth was unprecedented in Thai history. So was the subsequent government policies and measures used to increase the value of the holdings over a period of more than five years.

Kaewsan Atibhodi, a member of the now-defunct Assets Examination Committee, which investigated this and other Thaksin cases, said the overall process of asset concealment and "policy corruption" was just intriguing.

As a key prosecution witness in the Bt76-billion asset seizure case pending in the Supreme Court, Kaewsan last week testified that the whole Bt76 billion fortune should be devolved to the state.

"First of all, Thaksin hid his vast shareholdings even after being elected the prime minister, so he intentionally violated Article 100(3) of the NCCC law.

"Secondly, as prime minister, he introduced measures and policies that benefited Shin Corp so he violated Article 100(1) of the NCCC law.

"Therefore, Thaksin abused his office to gain his wealth, resulting in a loss to the state of more than Bt100 billion. Since he and his former wife controlled as much as 46.87 per cent of Shin Corp, the benefits from such a large shareholding were therefore ill-gotten and should be forfeited."

Yet, the prosecution would have to convince the court that Thaksin and Pojaman did really conceal their wealth while the former was in office - a key point consistently countered and dismissed by the defence lawyers.

Given that the burden of proof rests with the accused in corruption and related cases, the prosecution concluded that they were not satisfied with evidence presented by the defence, which argued that all Shin Corp shares were "sold" to the couple's children and relatives before Thaksin assumed the premiership.

"This argument was not convincing because the documentation, such as notices of share transfers, promissory notes, annual reports of Ample Rich Co (one of the offshore nominees) could have been tampered with or backdated to alter the whole story," Kaewsan said.

"However, we're not given any hard evidence that couldn't be meddled with, such as share depositories or transaction records that Thaksin could have asked from UBS Bank (Singapore branch) to prove that his son, Panthongtae, was the authorised owner of those shares, not just his father's nominee."

Pojaman testified before the court that Panthongtae earlier paid her Bt4.5 billion in promissory notes for a total of 450 million shares of TMB Bank that were sold to her son.

Her testimony raised even more questions than answers on the contentious point of whether the son and other Shinawatra children as well as relatives were genuine buyers of Thaksin and Pojaman's shares or just their nominees.

The facts show that if the Bt4.5 billion payment by Panthongtae to her mother for the TMB shares was real as claimed by Pojaman, the mother would have probably conned her son out of as much as Bt3 billion in just one go.

Why? The entire 450 million shares of TMB Bank as cited by Pojaman included 300 million shares that Pojaman got for free via the exercise of 300 million warrants, so the actual cost of all 450 million TMB shares was just Bt1.5 billion, not the hugely-inflated Bt4.5 billion.

Any decent mother wouldn't have done this to her beloved children. In other words, it simply defies conventional wisdom.

So what could have happened? Besides Pojaman's aides, who prepared the document for court evidence, no one else would have a clear idea of what went wrong, but the glitch clearly undermines the defence's credibility as far as true ownership of all of the Thaksin-Pojaman assets is concerned.

In fact, this is one of the most fundamental points in the prosecution's argument for taking permanent possession of the Bt76 billion.

The prosecution firmly believes that Thaksin covered up his wealth illegally and then launched policies and measures that enormously benefited his financial interests over his years in office before selling those assets to Temasek Holding of Singapore at a huge gain in 2006.

Company above state

Five policies and measures that benefited Shin Corp:

- Reduction in the concession fee of AIS from 25 per cent to 20 per cent of its revenue, resulting in state-owned TOT losing Bt70 billion.

- Amending AIS's contracts with TOT and state-owned CAT to share roaming charges resulting in a combined loss of Bt21.7 billion for the state.

- Enacting legislation to convert concession fees into excise tax on telecom services in bid to keep AIS's market lead at the expense of competitors.

- Approving Shin Sat's IP Star satellite project so that it did not have to put into orbit a Bt4-billion Thaicom 4 satellite, resulting in a Bt20-billion loss in state benefits.

- Approving a Bt1-billion increase in Exim Bank loan for Burma from Bt3 billion to Bt4 billion, so the extra Bt1 billion could be used to buy satellite services from Shin Sat.

Cambodian officials allegedly bribe superiors to delay retirement

October 17, 2007

Officials at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport bribed their superiors to delay retirement for a further five years, local media on Wednesday quoted Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers' Association (CITA) as saying.

In a letter dated Oct. 16, Rong Chhun claimed to know of four officials who have paid 4,000 U.S. dollars each to have their retirement suspended, reported Cambodian-language newspaper the Sralanh Khmer.

The four, who would reach retirement age in 2008, are heads and deputy heads of offices and departments of the ministry, the letter stated.

Although he did not identify the officials by name, Rong Chhun listed their birthdays.

The same practice occurs in provincial departments, the letter added.

Rong Chhun requested that Education Minister Kol Pheng take immediate action against the alleged graft, saying that older officials should be retired to give younger people opportunities to serve the nation.

Source:Xinhua

OSJI was right all along in the ECCC kickback allegations?

UN, Tribunal Announce More Transparent Practices

Mean Veasna, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
26 September 2007

The Khmer Rouge tribunal and UNDP announced Tuesday they were taking steps to improve transparency in hiring practices of Cambodian tribunal staff, following reports of corruption from an independent monitor and an internal assessment.

The UN's tribunal office issued recommendations Tuesday on its Web site, following an assessment in June.

According to the recommendations, the UN will send a court management expert to consult tribunal staff, assess the capabilities of existing staff, develop a rapid training program, produce job cards and introduce basic operating systems.

Charges of corruption in the courts have nettled the tribunal since a report last year by the independent Open Society Justice Initiative accused Cambodian judges of paying kickbacks to government officials for seats at the tribunal.

Cash for Cambodians [-UNDP's lack of oversight of the Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal]

September 25, 2007
The Wall Street Journal (USA)

The United Nations Development Program is already under scrutiny for gross irregularities in its programs in North Korea, from which it was forced to pull out earlier this year. Now there's another scandal to add to the list: UNDP's lack of oversight of the Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal, for which it oversees a significant share of the funding.

The complete details of an audit examining hiring practices haven't fully come to light yet, thanks to the UNDP's refusal to make the audit public or even share it with donors. But we've seen an early draft, and can start to fill in the outline of what's going on. It isn't pretty.

The Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal is split into halves: an international section overseen and funded by a U.N. trust fund, and a Cambodian-run section, the lion's share of whose funds are under UNDP oversight. The local section is called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and it appoints all local staff and Cambodian judges, among other things. Last October, the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, which has been monitoring the trials, raised questions about hiring practices on the Cambodian side.

The UNDP isn't administering small change, so allegations of misconduct with its public funds must be taken seriously. Of the $13.3 million budgeted for the Cambodian side of the tribunal for its three-year duration, the UNDP oversees $5 million from a 29-country donation and one million euros ($1.4 million) from the European Commission. The rest is provided by the Cambodian government, or pledged directly to the Cambodian government by individual countries, which to date have delivered only $1 million.

To its credit, UNDP swiftly hired a small Malaysian consulting company, Candide Consulting, to investigate the allegations. Candide conducted its work from January 29-February 8 and returned again in March, when it was joined by auditors from the U.N. Office of Audit and Performance Review. As U.S. law professor John Hall reported on our op-ed page on Friday, the initial findings were stark.

The auditors discovered inflated salaries and significantly increased staffing levels to the tune of $357,000 over the ECCC's original budget projections in 2004. The ECCC couldn't justify the extra hires and UNDP's overseers weren't even aware of the increase. The auditors also unearthed a raft of unqualified workers appointed without competitive hiring practices. It was refused access to the personnel files of 28 staffers appointed directly by the Cambodian government.

Even worse, the auditors uncovered a fundamental conflict of interest at the oversight board that is supposed to monitor the ECCC's activities. The 12-member Project Board is composed of personnel from UNDP, ECCC, the European Commission, and the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. According to the draft audit report -- and confirmed to us by UNDP -- the board overseeing the ECCC is currently chaired by the ECCC itself. How convenient.

The transgressions were so egregious that the auditors said this: "If the Cambodian side does not agree to the essential measures that are... necessary to ensure the integrity and success of the project, then serious considerations should be given to withdrawing from participation in the project altogether." And: "All the recruitments of staff made by ECCC to-date [sic] should be nullified and a new recruitment exercise launched."

Translation: The ECCC's hiring practices, overseen by the UNDP, are so flawed that the UNDP should consider starting from scratch. That's a strong finding, given that it took a decade to put the war-crimes tribunal together in the first place -- and that this same court is the one that's supposed to administer justice for the more than one million Cambodians slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

* * *

There could be more to come. In February, the Open Society Justice Initiative called for an investigation into allegations of kickbacks paid by Cambodian judges and court officials to their superiors. If true, that goes to the heart of the court's credibility since Cambodian judges form a majority on all of the judging panels of the war-crimes tribunal. The draft audit did not address these charges.

So what exactly did the final audit say? Only the UNDP -- and the Cambodian government -- know. The Project Board issued a press release saying it discussed the findings at its first meeting in June. But even the board was not allowed to see the final audit report. "The internal audit is not shared except between UNDP and the member state," a UNDP official in Phnom Penh who prefers to remain anonymous tells us in response to a question about whether the board saw the report. So much for the UNDP's responsibility to the European and U.S. taxpayers putting up the money.

ECCC spokeswoman Helen Jarvis says that the Cambodian side of the tribunal has accepted "all of the recommendations" of the audit and has even revised the "personnel handbook." "The main goal is spelling out in advance what procedures will be followed in the court and in the administration," she says. It's puzzling that this wasn't done from the start.

We're told that the Project Board plans to issue a statement today that will outline the steps the UNDP is taking in response to the audit report. That's a good first step. But if the UNDP really wants to clear its name, it would release the audit to the public -- who's paying for all of this, anyway.

UN Sends Administration Expert to Tribunal [-KR Tribunal silence on corruption issue places more doubts on this institution]

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
24 July 2007

A UN human resources expert began working with Khmer Rouge tribunal administrators Tuesday, a tribunal spokesman said, amid allegations of corruption and an unreleased audit.

Rights organizations have been calling for the release of UN audit on the tribunal completed earlier this year, following allegations that Cambodian judges pay a large portion of their salaries to top officials in order to sit on the tribunal.

UN officials declined to name the expert or give details on his work, but Reach Sambath, a spokesman for the tribunal, confirmed the representative started working with tribunal staff Tuesday.

"He arrived already and he starts his work today," Reach Sambath said. "It's too early for us to say [what he will be doing] because he has just come, and we will give additional news later."