PM defends logging tycoons

[geovalin]

Phak Seangly and Mech Dara

Prime Minister Hun Sen has defended the actions of two prominent tycoons accused of logging vast stretches of forest in Cambodia’s protected Virachey National Park as “legal,” according to a letter obtained by the . Warning that Virachey’s forest would be “extinct in the very near future”, 23 opposition lawmakers sent a letter to the premier in July asking for an immediate halt to logging in the park by tycoons Try Pheap and An Marady.

Hun Sen’s reply came on November 16 and categorically absolved the pair of any wrongdoing. “Both companies just collected forest products from the construction of a road in Virachey Park connecting Andong Meas district [in Ratanakkiri province] to the Dragon’s Tail area [between the Vietnam and Laos borders] and from timber seized from illegal loggers,” Hun Sen’s letter read.

read more: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/pm-defends-logging-tycoons