Corruption battle has begun: govt

Photo by: Uy Nousereimony
Keo Remy, spokesman of the Anti-Corruption institute, addresses a conference.

via CAAI

Monday, 27 September 2010 21:20 Vong Sokheng

THE newly established National Anticorruption Commission has established a five-year plan to fight corruption inCambodia, and has said that it is in the process of investigating 10 complaints against government officials.

NAC spokesman Keo Remy said the Anticorruption Unit, the NAC’s investigative arm, had made significant progress during its roughly three months in operation.

“We have started our work and we don’t want to give detailed information that exposes the investigative procedure, but right now, senior officials at the ACU have started examining all of the complaints,” Keo Remy said.

The five-year plan, Keo Remy said, included such previously announced measures as anticorruption education, forced public-asset disclosures by government officials and the establishment of a website to publicise the work of the ACU.

Om Yentieng, head of the ACU, said in July that as many as 100,000 officials could be required to declare their assets.

On Monday anti-corruption officials met representatives from civil society organisations to discuss the process of filing complaints with the ACU.

San Chey, the Cambodian representative for the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability, a regional watchdog group, said his organisation had filed 90 complaints with the ACU related to corruption in road tax collection on behalf of Cambodians in 14 provinces.

The ACU rejected the complaints, however, as they lacked detailed information about the offences.

Despite this, San Chey said the ACU’s willingness to consult with civil society groups had laid the groundwork for “further cooperation in the fight against corruption”.

“They gave us the green light for the establishment of a memorandum of understanding in future talks,” San Chey said.

The Kingdom ranked 158 out of 180 in anti-graft group Transparency International’s world corruption index last year.