Personnel Manager's Removal

There is more to this story than the article below lets on. The newly appointed personnel manager stepped into the shoes of his predecessor who was "removed" from this position in the midst of the recently surfaced graft accusations reportedly brought to the attention of the UN side of the tribunal by the Cambodian side's rank-and-file employees. Curiously enough, the court felt that the accusations against the stepping down personnel manager were not grave enough to prosecute, but sufficient to remove him from the job and remand him to his previously held position at the Council of Ministers.

Efforts to pass a comprehensive anti-corruption law have been ongoing in Cambodia since the UNTAC period and a number of drafts have been produced to this effect since -- recently (last 5 years) with generous US funding to a US-based NGO, PACT -- which thus far have not amounted to a statute. This, however, does not mean that there is no legal basis for prosecution on charges of corruption at this point as the existing criminal code contains an article which expressly proscribes corruption.

If the tribunal is trying to make a point of 'going clean' here, remanding an alleged perpetrator to his formerly held job hardly sounds as an suitable punishment.