A new investigation by RFA out this week explores the multi-million dollar investments made in Australia by Cambodia’s ruling elite over the last five years. These investments appear to have been made in tandem with a campaign of intimidation orchestrated by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) against Australia’s Cambodian community.
On Monday, RFA sat down with Julian Hill, an Australian member of parliament representing the city of Melbourne, home to the highest concentration of Cambodian-born Australians. In the interview, reproduced below, Hill blasted as “pathetic” the Australian government’s response to the millions of dollars flowing from Phnom Penh to cities like Melbourne and Sydney, labelling the Cambodian authorities a “gangster regime.”
The following day, Hill addressed the Federation Chamber of the Australian parliament, where he referenced RFA’s investigation in a speech calling on the Australian government to take a firmer stance with the Cambodian authorities.
The constituency you represent, Melbourne, is home to one of the highest concentrations of Cambodian-born Australians. Over the last five years, the CPP has deployed a mixture of charm and bullying tactics in the hope of stifling dissent among Australia’s Cambodian community. What RFA’s latest investigation found is that over the same five years, the CPP’s top families have invested tens of millions of dollars in Australian businesses and real estate, much of it in Melbourne. Do you see a connection between these two trends?
It’s of enormous concern to me as someone who loves the Cambodian community and believes in democracy and human rights to really understand more about what’s going on. I congratulate you and RFA on the investigative work that you’ve done to uncover this. I’m deeply concerned, as (opposition party spokesperson) Kem Monovithya said, that Australia has become the number one destination for Cambodia’s thugs. And, the Cambodian diaspora tell us, the favorite place for the corrupt elite of Hun Sen’s gangster regime, his family, and cronies to take corrupt money – money gained from human rights [abuses] and invested in Australia. That’s an enormous concern.
Like many countries, Australia offers visas to foreign nationals willing to invest in the local economy. What we found is that, over the last five years, wealthy Cambodians invested a total of A$38.5 million ($29.7 million) in support of successful investor visa applications. And while Australia’s Department for Home Affairs insists that all funds and applicants are rigorously vetted, a lot of observers aren’t so convinced. Do you think when it comes to authoritarian countries like Cambodia that the Australian immigration authorities need to be doing more to vet the applicants for these visas?
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