Cambodian officials told to declare assets

Senior officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, will have to declare their assets

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia has ordered more than 100,000 government officials to declare their personal assets starting from this month in a bid to fight rampant corruption, an official said Wednesday.

Senior officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, must make confidential declarations of property, vehicles, business interests and other assets, said Keo Remy, spokesman for the government's National Council for Anti-Corruption.

"It is historic for our country," he told AFP.

Keo Remy said the officials would be required to report their assets to the country's newly established Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU), but the details would not be made public.

"The asset declaration by the officials will be done in secret," he said.

"We have to safeguard each official's physical and mental safety, and also the country's political stability in particular."

The deadline for the asset declaration had not been set, he said.

Yim Sovann, the spokesman for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, slammed the process as pointless.

"Secret asset declaration means no asset declaration," he said.

"So we don't support this because it is useless," Yim Sovann added.

The move followed parliamentary approval of a long-awaited anti-corruption law last year that could see officials jailed for up to 15 years if convicted of accepting bribes.

Cambodia was ranked 154th worst out of 178 countries on anti-graft organisation Transparency International's most recent corruption perception index.

It was also ranked the second most corrupt southeast Asian nation after Indonesia in an annual poll by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy last year.