The government is in debt to the Ly Chhuong construction company due to a series of infrastructure projects given to the company without a bidding process, with payments deferred in a “build first, settle later” racket, the prime minister said.
Phav Nhoeung and Seng Lin were summoned by the Koh Kong Provincial Court prosecutor based on a complaint from Chhay Vy, their former representative.
Siem Reap province, which is typically the country’s leading travel destination, is not yet part of the Tourism Ministry’s “vaccine tour” program but will be included with other destinations in early 2022 as the country reopens further.
UDG, a massive Chinese-owned, U.S.-sanctioned development in the coastal province, has been embroiled in disputes with residents for years, with more than 1,000 families forced off about 10,000 hectares, and 1,500 houses dismantled and cleared, according to past research reports.
A Koh Kong journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for incitement on Thursday — without a lawyer and just two days after being questioned by police — over a report that the deputy governor was “cruel and abuses citizens.”
Some 1,333 families in Koh Kong are being offered 1 to 3.5 hectares each over a decade-old land dispute with the Union Development Group, as some families say they reject the deal and will fight to stay on their old land.
An audio recording, shared with VOD, appears to show Defense Minister Tea Banh instructing Koh Kong officials to take action against journalist Youn Chhiv. Several government-aligned media outlets have reported on Banh’s instructions, including some that quoted from the recording.
More than 20 families in Koh Kong province, where authorities have been razing villagers’ farmland, are asking officials to formalize their ownership as they fear the land clearings will continue.
Koh Kong villagers said that authorities have been clearing their crops since last week in the province’s Botum Sakor district, with authorities saying the people were encroaching on the Botum Sakor National Park.
Families who built their stilted homes on Kiri Sakor district’s estuaries decades ago say their lives revolve around the antics of the Union Development Group, locked in a stalemate as they repeatedly rebuild the structures that the company’s guards dismantle.
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