Cambodia still plagued by corruption: TI

Rampant corruption in the country’s judiciary was one of the reasons why Cambodia remained perceived as the most corrupt nation in Southeast Asia, Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) said yesterday. Cambodia scored 21 out of a possible 100 points on the CPI, coming in as the 156th perceived most corrupt nation of the 176 countries studied.
 

Transparency International Cambodia (TI Cambodia) executive director Preap Kol explained the judiciary is seen as one of the most corrupt public institutions in the kingdom, alluding to the public seeing it as an institution drenched in bias and favoritism. “We need to clear out and speed up the judicial reforms. We want to see an independent judiciary which focuses on transparency of its trials, in the announcement of its rulings and decisions of its sentences as well as for the selection procedure of the judges to ensure that there is no political interference in the form of bribes,”  he said during yesterday’s press conference in Phnom Penh.
 

When asked if the months-long detention of the four Adhoc activists and one National Election Commission official was the result of ongoing corruption in the Justice Ministry, Mr. Kol remained coy. “Maybe. Possibly,” he said on the sidelines of the event before excusing himself.

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