Legal framework

Police in Phnom Penh made the country’s largest ever methamphetamine seizure late last week after arresting three members of a trafficking ring who were found with nearly 55 kg of drugs worth about $3 million, most of which was destined for Taiwan, an official said ...

A Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldier was arrested by Thai authorities Wednesday on suspicion of a hit-and-run that killed a man across the border and was being detained Friday at a courthouse in Thailand’s Chonburi province, officials said. ...

A long-expected crackdown on foreign nationals lacking valid visas and work permits has arrived in the coastal region with a jolt that includes late-night raids on guesthouses, followed by arrests of those found overstaying their visas. ...

A Cambodian man who sold his license to operate a medical clinic in Stung Treng City faces up to 10 years in prison after a woman died following an abortion conducted illegally on the premises, a court official said. ...

A Malaysian-flagged oil tanker that was hijacked by pirates last week was spotted in Cambodian waters by the Australian air force Thursday, according to Malaysian state media. Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh, however, said the vessel never passed through the country’s territorial sea. ...

Police said Thursday that a land dispute in Kampot province’s Toek Chhou district was likely the motive for a drive-by shooting in the district on Wednesday that left two men with multiple gunshot wounds. ...

The European Union says the Cambodian government has agreed to the first part of a comprehensive plan they have been wrangling over for more than a year to properly compensate thousands of families that have lost land to sugarcane plantations. ...

Opposition lawmakers and transparency groups have slammed a recent Council of Ministers directive ordering government employees to deny access to parliamentary commissions investigating corruption, saying it severely undermines democracy. Released yesterday by Secretary of State Tek Reth Samrach, the letter dictates public employees must follow the ...

The draft of a rent-control law aimed at regulating rising housing prices and sudden rental hikes for low-income workers and students is expected to go before the National Assembly by the end of June, officials from the bipartisan working group in charge of the law ...

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. ...

Two more ethnic Montagnards from Vietnam are in hiding in a remote northeastern province in Cambodia, two days after villagers there helped six others reach United Nations refugee agency personnel in the capital to seek asylum, local residents said Tuesday. ...

An ethnic Jarai villager in Ratanakkiri province said Monday that two men claiming to be Montagnard asylum seekers approached him on his farm on Sunday looking for help after swimming across the Sesan River to escape Vietnamese police three days earlier. ...

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. ...