Tea Money
Rest stop, Stung Treng, 2008.
$500 million goes missing in Cambodia each year in under-the-table payments, estimates U.S. Ambassador Carol Rodley. A recent egregious example is the $3.5 million payment that the Australia-based mining giant BHP Billiton signed over to the government in 2006. In exchange for a bauxite mining concession in Mondulkiri, an impoverished northeast province that is home to indigenous minorities, the company pledged $1 million for the concession and $2.5 million for a "social fund." The money was deposited in September 2006; it has not been seen or accounted for on government books since. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, when asked about the money in 2007 Water Minister Lim Kean Hor told the National Assembly that the BHP Billiton payment was "tea money" - the friendly, under-the-table payments that ministers and businesspeople rely on to grease the wheels of Cambodia business transactions. Another lawmaker backed him up, saying that the money was "just for friendship."
BHP Billiton insists that the money was not a bribe, nor did they expect that a country that consistently scrapes the bottom of Transparency International's corruption index would treat the payment as such. Meanwhile, the Khmer manager of the Mondulkiri project has resigned over the company's treatment of the indigenous communities near the concession, and no one in the province seen a riel of the "social fund."
Posted on Monday, May 24, 2010
