According to the
Website of the Cambodian Red Cross, the financial report for the 5th
term of office was agreed and adopted during the 6th Cambodian Red
Cross General Assembly on August 7, 2014. The report “clearly indicated about
transparency and accountability of the management and utilization of funds that
the National Societies received from all sources for its cross-cutting
activities which is a mechanism to ensures warmest confidentiality among donors
and philanthropies both in and out country.” This statement is, to say the
least, an indication that a financial report does exist. The fact that Radio
Free Asia was unable to get information through phone calls cannot be
construed that transparency and accountability had been compromised. Radio Free
Asia should be abided by the rule of professionalism in reporting, courtesy in
its ways of seeking information, and great patience in dealing with others. It
was a mistake to assume that the namesake of Radio Free Asia is a license to a
prompt answer when called and asked.
Radio Free Asia
relies merely on its own assumptions without making serious efforts to bring to
the table the facts and evidences and further makes them sound as serious
accusations when it says: “it seemed that it was never difficult to see
that the Cambodian Red Cross has not only been gradually transformed to be an
institution with political alignment, misused by the consortium of the wives of
high ranking officials members of the Cambodian government, but it has been
also transformed to be a den for money laundering and protection for top
businessmen and above all the Cambodian Red Cross is a front line organization
that seeks for votes in favor of the party in power (the Cambodian People’s
Party).” The manipulation and the transformation of its own assumptions in
order to manufacture serious accusations without exposing the real and factual
cases would not have helped build up the credibility of Radio Free Asia, but in
the contrary they would rather have diminished the reputation of this media
outlet among Cambodian listeners. Rumors-mongers would have applauded Radio
Free Asia, but reasonable people would have reacted negatively to these forms
of assumptions-accusations.
Radio
Free Asia exploited the 2014 Swiss-based Basel Institute on Governance Anti
Money Laundering Index (the Basel AML Index) Report that assigns a score of
8.39 for Cambodia, behind only Afghanistan (8.53) and Iran (8.56) meaning that
Cambodia was the third highest country among 162 countries vulnerable to money
laundering as the basis for Radio Free Asia to manufacture its accusations
against the Cambodian Red Cross. Three important points deserve to be examined
about this report.
Firstly,
qualitatively speaking all 162 countries is vulnerable to money
laundering. This would have put all 162 countries in the same boat. Civilized,
economically developed and powerful countries should have been ashamed of
themselves for not having eradicated money laundering. The report provides the
score of 6.29 for Russia, 5.54 for Switzerland, 5.49 for Germany, 4.78 for
France and 4.72 for the United Kingdom, 6.76 for Vietnam, 6.39 for the
Philippines, 6.33 for the United Arab Emirates, 6.06 for China and 5.92 for
Japan, 5.85 for Brasil, 5.20 for the United States of America, 5.01 for
Australia, just to name a few economically advanced countries in Europe, Asia,
America and Australia.
Secondly,
the Basel Report emphasized that the index only ranks
countries’ vulnerability to money laundering, and not how much laundering
actually occurs. The Basel AML index does not assess the amount of illicit
financial money or transactions. Illicit dollar amount of money laundering
would have been most likely very huge in economically developed countries which
should be equated to huge dollar amount of corruption in those countries. Why
the Swiss-based Institute on Governance stopped short of exposing the
quantity of illicit dollar amount of money laundering by country? Why Radio
Free Asia took the Basel AML Index Report at face-value? For the first question
the Swiss-based Institute should provide explanations, as it pleases. For the
second question, there is no doubt that a half-full Basel AML Index Report
served the purpose of Radio Free Asia in its vicious attacks of the Cambodian
Red Cross.
Thirdly, the Basel AML Index Report
measured the money laundering using the same parameters for 162 countries in
the world, rich and poor, big and small, having different economic, financial
and political systems with countless peculiar realities that affect the
behaviour of the people and the government. The report is meaningless for
decision-makers of economically advanced countries, but handily convenient for
international and local NGOs and especially for Radio Free Asia to attack
governments and organizations as the ways to express their superiority and
righteousness.
It is useless to reason with Radio
Free Asia, simply because it pursues interests which are totally different from
those of the Cambodian government and people. The more Radio Free Asia relies
on its own assumptions-accusations, the lower its credibility goes.
September 9, 2014
Professor Pen
Ngoeun, Advisor
University of
Puthisastra, Phnom Penh, Cambodia