News

Villagers from Koh Kong province delivered petitions in Phnom Penh on Friday seeking international intervention in their land dispute with powerful businessman and CPP senator Ly Yong Phat, alleging that his Koh Kong Special Economic Zone (SEZ) was encroaching on their farmland. Five representatives of the ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al on Wednesday lauded the country’s controversial sugar industry and the jobs it has created, saying that companies operating in the sector need to be defended against the widespread criticism they have been receiving. Rights groups and the opposition CNRP have undertaken ...

Early this month, in what looks like a failed attempt to save its reputation, Australia‘s ANZ Bank severed its ties with Phnom Penh Sugar, a company accused of a range of human rights abuses linked to its plantations in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia. The move ...

Initially a status reserved for a privileged few, the number of businesspeople bearing the honorific “oknha” has ballooned from an estimated 20 individuals in 2004 to some 200 in 2008 and more than 700 today. Traditionally a title of nobility bestowed by the king to honor ...

Prominent tycoon and ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat has now set his sights on the media landscape. Phat, the head of LYP Group, on Friday confirmed plans that he is seeking to set up a television station. The entry of an LYP channel, proposed as part ...

Hundreds of families in Koh Kong province have since early May been affected by drought and a lack of clean water, which is supposed to be provided by tycoon and ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat. Due to the annual drought in the province, two reservoirs ...

Prominent businessman and Cambodian People’s Party Senator Ly Yong Phat yesterday questioned what he had done to warrant a verbal attack from opposition party leader Sam Rainsy, who said on Wednesday that the tycoon had grabbed land from people in Koh Kong province and should ...

ANZ’s financing of ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s controversial sugar plantation has come under fire once again, this time in an investigation by NGO Oxfam into Australia’s big four banks and their links to rights abuses in developing countries. In a report titled “Banking on ...

Five men in Koh Kong province could be prosecuted for stealing from a construction crew after the group allegedly seized tools in January, preventing the construction team from building fences in their village. Police summonsed the villagers from Kiri Sakor district’s Prek Khsach commune for questioning ...

First Sum Tea lost her farm. Then she lost her son. Sum Tea is one of hundreds of farmers who lost her small landholding in 2006 when the Cambodian government granted Phnom Penh Sugar, a company owned by Cambodian tycoon and ruling party senator Ly Yong ...

The Court of Appeal on Tuesday upheld a 2012 conviction of encroaching on public land, but significantly reduced the sentence, against businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary for illegally filling in part of a Phnom Penh lake. Ms. Sokountheary—also known as Grandma Crocodile for the crocodile farm she owns—was ...

Executives from Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) and local partner Royal Group of Companies (RGC) both went into damage control yesterday after comments by ANZ chief executive officer Mike Smith suggesting the joint banking venture between the two was on the rocks. Royal ...

A 44-year-old woman was run over and killed by a harvesting machine on Sunday while working on a sugarcane plantation in Kompong Speu province owned by CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat, marking at least the second death on the plantation since December. Y Mom, originally from ...

Hundreds of trucks hauling sugarcane queue up along the dusty roads that cut a path through a plantation in Kampong Speu province. Their destination: Cambodia’s most advanced sugar refinery. Its owners say the landmark project, run by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company and its president, ruling ...

Auditors from the Coca-Cola Company visited Oddar Meanchey province on Friday to investigate allegations of land grabbing against sugar plantations that supply the global drinks giant, but called off a community meeting because of a heavy police presence, an NGO said Sunday. Chun Bora of the ...

The Coca-Cola Company on Thursday confirmed that it has sent a team to Cambodia to assess long-running allegations of land grabbing and forced evictions at the sugar cane plantations that help sweeten the global drinks giant’s sodas. The team’s visit follows the company’s pledge in November ...

Third-party auditors hired by The Coca-Cola Company are conducting an audit of Cambodian sugar suppliers, NGO and community representatives said yesterday. “Coke has commissioned them to conduct an assessment on their suppliers. They will talk to all parties, the community, NGOs and the company,” said Eang ...

The government on Monday agreed to a comprehensive solution for rural families who have lost their land to well-connected agricultural plantations exporting sugar to the European Union (E.U.) duty free and will meet again early next month to discuss details. The decision was made at a ...

The director of a CPP senator’s sugar plantation accused of stealing land from hundreds of families said Wednesday that most locals were happy with the new jobs the plantation has generated, a week after a visiting European Union parliamentarian renewed calls for an investigation of ...

Sugar plantations that benefit from the European Union’s Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme, which allows preferential access to the E.U.’s market, have further impoverished Cambodia’s poor, and an investigation needs to be launched, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) said on Friday. Patrice Tirolien, MEP ...

Rights groups yesterday called on ANZ bank to help address alleged labour and environmental violations at Phnom Penh Sugar Company instead of walking away from the problem. A joint statement released yesterday by Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive Development International said it would be wrong for the ...

Shareholders will want answers from ANZ bank after it was revealed this week that the banking giant’s joint venture in Cambodia financed ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s controversial sugar plantation, the Responsible Investment Association Australia (RIAA) said yesterday. Environmental audit documents obtained by the Post on Tuesday ...

Three NGOs on Wednesday called on ANZ Royal Bank to help the hundreds of families who have lost farmland to a sugar plantation that the bank helped to finance in Kompong Speu province. The NGOs also made public a 2013 social and environmental impact assessment of ...

Villagers locked in a land dispute with ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar Company have submitted a petition to the provincial court asking for a cessation of the court’s issuing of summonses and arrest warrants. The court has so far issued 37 summonses, ...