Laws and regulations

The Health Ministry has drafted Cambodia’s first-ever law to control the sale and consumption of alcohol, which imposes a minimum legal drinking age of 21 and would fine retailers who sell liquor to anyone underage. ...

Thai authorities on Tuesday arrested a former Cambodian maid and her Malaysian boyfriend as they allegedly attempted to enter Cambodia using fake passports at the Poipet border checkpoint yesterday after travelling overland from Malaysia, border officials said yesterday. ...

Deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha yesterday weighed in on debates over the controversial draft NGO law, calling for its adoption to be postponed. ...

Judicial police ignored an arrest warrant for former Khmer Rouge navy commander and accused war criminal Meas Muth, putting the government in breach of the rules of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, declassified documents released by the tribunal Wednesday show. ...

Seventeen NGOs involved in child protection yesterday released a joint statement expressing their “outrage” over the impending release of former Enfants du Cambodge director Philippe Broaly, who was convicted last month of sexually abusing five boys over a period of several years. ...

French police will arrive in Cambodia in October to reinvestigate two separate murders of French nationals that have yet to be solved by Cambodian police, an Interior Ministry official said Tuesday. ...

A Cambodian man who had been illegally logging rosewood across the border in Thailand was shot dead by Thai soldiers on Friday, a village chief in Oddar Meanchey province said Tuesday. ...

A police search of three buses that were smuggling goods from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh has turned up more than 14 tons of clothes, paint thinner and other materials, officials said Tuesday. ...

In the first verdict handed down in the case against Major General Thong Sarath, who stands accused of masterminding a fellow tycoon’s assassination, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday sentenced him and one of his bodyguards to 30 months in jail for illegal weapons ...

Police in Svay Rieng province on Sunday stopped three Phnom Penh-bound tour buses from Vietnam suspected of smuggling shoes and clothing into Cambodia, officials said Monday. ...

Seven more people believed to be involved in a large-scale Ponzi scheme have been arrested and were questioned by a prosecutor in Takeo province Sunday, bringing to 14 the total number of suspects apprehended in connection with the racket. ...

Municipal officials and the police have started identifying and registering the city’s previously unregulated tuk-tuk and moto drivers, following a constant flow of complaints about them from tourists and business owners, officials say. ...

Two women charged with drug trafficking told the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday that their original police statements, which placed them in a trafficking ring, had been falsified by police. ...

The spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Kiev Sopheak, said that there are still ghost workers in government offices, even though the Anti-Corruption Unit cracked down on this practice last year. ...

Three members of the Free Trade Union on Thursday filed complaints against members of a rival union for allegedly beating them with bamboo sticks and banana tree branches during a clash outside Phnom Penh’s SH International garment factory on Wednesday morning. ...

Immigration police arrested 36 illegal Vietnamese immigrants Thursday morning during coordinated raids of 18 furniture shops in Phnom Penh’s Chamkar Mon district, an immigration official said. ...

Thirteen months after Cambodia’s largest ever haul of ivory was seized at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, the chief of customs on Wednesday appeared before the provincial court to answer questions about the case for the first time. ...

An updated version of the draft Trade Union Law gives the Labor Ministry the power to suspend unions that “cooperate” or hold joint activities with groups the government deems to have caused economic sabotage or “damaged” the national interest, according to a copy of the ...

An NGO umbrella group says it has seen a new, leaked copy of a controversial draft law that aims to regulate the country’s hundreds of non-government organizations—and that the latest version marks a significant step backward. ...

Armed Vietnamese soldiers on Monday tried to prevent more than 300 people led by CNRP lawmakers from visiting a disputed border area in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, a lawmaker and a rights worker said. ...

Police in Siem Reap province delayed sending seven suspects accused of running a ponzi scheme to court Monday on the order of a prosecutor, who said the director of the company behind the scheme would be appearing today to “guarantee them.” ...

A handcart-puller who was knocked unconscious by military police during a May 26 protest in Poipet City—sparking an attack on the local customs office—on Friday filed a court complaint requesting $10,000 in compensation from his attackers, a rights monitor said Sunday. ...

Russian businessman Nikolai Doroshenko was released from prison in Sihanoukville over the weekend after the Supreme Court granted him bail due to his poor health, more than two months after he was jailed on charges related to a dispute with his recently deported investment partner, ...

The Cambodian government is trying to weather criticism over the lack of transparency concerning the proposed draft law on NGOs that is now in the hands of the National Assembly. But another important draft law regulating trade unions is being heavily criticized for violating international ...