Law and judiciary

Despite widespread concern it could curtail pro-democracy and rights work in the country, a bill to regulate NGOs in Cambodia arrived at the National Assembly Tuesday, where it must be debated before its likely passage into law. ...

Outgoing ambassador of the European Union to Cambodia Jean-Francois Cautain on Tuesday welcomed the Cambodian government’s decision to establish a law on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Associations, according to a Cambodian government official. ...

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. ...

With the death last week of Chea Sim, a ruling party stalwart and former Khmer Rouge cadre, Cambodians are again reminded that the powerful are rarely prosecuted, Human Rights Watch says. ...

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. ...

The case of a woman who was accused of killing her mother to steal more than 375 grams of gold in Koh Kong province, has been sent to the provincial court despite investigators being unable to find any incriminating evidence to demonstrate her involvement in ...

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. ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday heard the case of a former teenage monk accused of the murder of one of his superiors, allegedly while he was being reprimanded. ...

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. ...

Officials at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court and Justice Ministry on Thursday confirmed that a prosecutor and judge in Siem Reap are suing human rights advocate Ny Chakrya for defamation over a complaint he filed against them last month. On Thursday, a spokesman for the ...

A university student who was arrested in Phnom Penh on Tuesday over a string of drunken hit-and-runs in his Lexus SUV said Thursday that he decided to end his rampage by crashing into the U.S. ambassador’s residence because he had hoped embassy security guards would ...

Tycoon Sok Rathorn, who was in the midst of a one-year prison sentence on fraud charges, was provisionally released from detention yesterday after a deal was struck in a separate case. ...

The last two opposition activists charged with inciting an “insurrection” during a protest of the 2013 general election were questioned yesterday at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, as the lawyer of the accused aired hope that the court would not compile enough evidence to sentence ...

A weekslong strike by more than 2,000 workers from a Phnom Penh factory that supplies global fashion brand H&M ended Wednesday after unions scaled down their original demands and backed down over a condition that workers receive their full salaries for the strike period, representatives ...

A Cambodian senior police officer confirmed Wednesday that Chinese economic fugitive Sun Xin, 46, and a former cashier of the Beijing municipal bureau of press, had worked in a factory in west Cambodia’s Kampong Speu province for six years before being arrested and sent back ...

The director of the Mondolkiri provincial mines and energy department Tuesday identified the operators of an illegal gold mine that was shut down last week as Royal Cambodian Armed Forces officers. ...

A Bangkok-based regional law firm says it will expand to Cambodia in the coming weeks, despite the local bar association’s renewed drive to clamp down on foreign lawyers practising “illegally” in the country. Law firm Tilleke & Gibbins said it expected to enter the legal scene ...