2016 has been a hell of a year, with the underdog, the anti-establishment figures and the disaffected finding themselves the people’s champions.

Whether it was Leicester City winning the EPL, or the Chicago Cubs winning something in American cricket, or plucky Scotsman Andy Murray winning Olympic gold and #tennisplayerofourhearts, sporting history books were rewritten during the year. 2016 also ushered in a shakeup in politics – angry, over 50, British white van men turned up in droves to reclaim sovereignty for ’Queen country’ and stuck a defiant two-finger salute out to the Krauts and Clogs, Wops and Frogs who have been dictating the rules from bureaucratic Brussels for too long.

In ASEAN, the country best known for exporting nannies, budget English teachers, sex workers and God botherers voted in a homicidal maniac who threatened to kill 100,000 drug users and throw them into the sea, a policy he subsequently began in great earnest. He also called POTUS a ‘son of a whore’, and offered all his sea, nannies, budget English teachers, sex workers and God botherers to once mortal enemy China, just to piss off the Yanks.

Over in the free world, the good citizens of ‘Merca elected a shouty billionaire off the telly with tiny hands and a ferret glued on his head to lead the ‘greatest country in the world’ and, paradoxically, make it ‘great again’.

The world lost countless greats from the world of sport, stage, screen and music, and Cambodia lost the biggest number of of foreigner deaths on record this year, with 161 fatalities at the rime of writing. There was definitely something in the water and the drugs. Even over on the SHK based tribute site there was a couple of thought provoking threads that weren’t hijacked by angry, gun toting ‘mercans and ‘strayan bush racists. (No, not really, it’s even worse than 2015).

Meanwhile, Cambodia provided a haven for those with an aversion to change in a crazy, chaotic world. The Kingdom soldiered along, doing pretty much what it did last year, but with perhaps a little more ghusto. The same political players danced the same political moves, those at the top came out with some cringeworthy quotes, expats behaved badly with plenty departing to the great girly bar in the sky, and bizarre stories came out across various media outlets.

So allow K440 to take you on a journey back through the last 12 months to remind you what you have forgotten, or weren’t interested in first time round.

January

In late December 2015 the big man of Cambodia used one of his infamous graduation rants/speeches to promise bemused students that he would cut off his right hand before pardoning pantomime clown Sam Rainsy one more time. The court summons for the Rainman was set for January 4 but, predictably as ever, the leader of the opposition decided to bunker down in his comfortable Parisian abode, rather than Prey Sar.

The first dead white man of the year award went to 73 year old American James R Croy, pushing up the average age stats and an early lead from team Shitsville. Sihanoukville punched over its weight for much of the year in the race be the home for most foreign fatalities and led for much of the year, only for Phnom Penh to stage a late rally and pip the most beautiful bay in the world to second place in the RIP races.

If you have ever seen any of the Final Destination movies, you’ll know that you can’t cheat death – when the Grym Reaper comes a’ knocking, it’s time. Sadly a popular singer, Vann Makara found this out on National Road 4, when his car was involved in an accident. Escaping the accident at Pich Nil with minor injuries, the crooner got into an ambulance for treatment in Phnom Penh.  Which crashed and killed him.

The obligatory perp shot competition of  banged up barangs  had a strong early contender with Swiss man-boob-tattooed Daniel Andersen picked up in Shitsville for being off his nut, causing traffic accidents, wearing fisherman pants and that ink work, obviously.

Khmer girlfriends got their stab on in 2016, the first incident being a British English teacher, Christopher Heath getting a knife in the chest from his beloved in their shared PP rented room.

The complex issue of cybercrime has not gone unnoticed in the Kingdom of Wonder, with INTERPOL being requested to track down a rogue Photoshop agent who maliciously manipulated a snap of the Strongman and First Family’s beach break by moving FLOTKOW’s leg a little bit to give her a John Wayne stance.

INTERPOL were, however involved in the tracking down of an appalling, very wealthy and well-connected Belgian child sex offender, Peter Ceulen. In January an appeal went out for the whereabouts of this odious creature after he was convicted in Europe but had done a runner, with Khmer440 leading the charge. It soon became apparent that he was in Cambodia where he and his family owned several luxury properties and businesses.  After a cat and mouse game lasting two months, Ceulen eventually handed himself in in March, having eluded justice thanks to friends and family helping him – nobody has yet been charged with aiding and abetting his run from justice – go figure.   The 60 year old will face 19 years + in the slammer and hopefully never be a free man again after his horrific crimes which don’t bear repeating on this page.

February

The Chinese are well known for liking a flutter, but in February a former accountant of CETIC International Hy­dro­power Development Co. Ltd, Mr. Chen Chun Lin, 49, was up in the dock and sentenced to a four and a half year stretch after embezzling almost $2 million from his employers and blowing the lot down at the casino. Somehow, during his time in the big house, the down-0n-his-luck crapshooter must pay back the full amount to the company, which is building a hydro-electric power plant in Koh Kong, and stump up an extra $50k in compensation. Perhaps through a behind bars roulette table for high-rolling lags?

A flying Dutchman hit the headlines when a routine drunk driving stop turned into a reenactment of the great escape from Stalag Luft III. Niel Heco Comelis Van Klooster was stopped by the competent authorities on suspicion of being on the pop when in charge of a vehicle. His result of 0.94mg alcohol was enough for him to spend a night in the cop shop, but the intrepid cloggie was having none of it and smashed a hole in the ceiling from where he tried to make his escape. The ceiling collapsed under his weight and the absconder plummeted to earth, injuring a few other detainees. Even with a sprained ankle the Country Manager at Everjobs Cambodia continued to make an arse of himself by trying to kick the door in. After a tense night he was taken to the municipal court, where he was released on ‘bail’ after ‘apologizing’ and promising that his family in Windmilland will pick up the tab. No doubt a serious wedge of cash was exchanged under the table.

Ratanakiri had a very special VIP guest in the form of Thai princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. The question one always asks is when such dignitaries arrive, where will the royal penny be spent? Fortunately the Cambodian hosts thought ahead about this problem and installed a $40,000 shitehouse on the banks of the lake HRH was about to visit. Sadly the princess didn’t feel the urge to use the overpriced khazi, for a number one or number 2, and the luxurious lavvy was removed as soon as she flew off in her helicopter.

In an unusual twist to a murder conviction, a supposed victim turned up 4 years after he was supposedly stabbed to death in Koh Kong. Rumours of Mak Chien’s death were proved to be exaggerated when he arrived back in his home village after a long spell of working in Thailand. His family’s reported response; ‘Oh you’re still alive, we thought it was you’ Despite the dead man walking pleading with judges to release his supposed killers. the word from the top cop brass stated ‘If they’re not guilty of killing him, then they’re guilty of killing somebody’. Touché.

February is always the month where some media outlet somewhere else will roll out the same headline used for the past umpteen years, along the lines of ‘Cambodia-Where Valentine’s Day is the most Rapey Day of the Year’, again. This year it was the turn of the Washington Post. However, trawling back through a years’ worth of news story, it’s a sad fact that rape and/or murders are far too common in Cambodia, not just on the 14^th Feb.

A well-known Celtic barkeep was thrown in a Swedish slammer over February and March for smuggling a few happy pills, easily purchased over the counter from any Cambodian chemist, yet severely looked down upon by Nordic customs officials. All’s well that ends well, however, as he finally made his way back to the kingdom for a few beers and a story to tell. Just as well because the Notorious Daun Penh Boys were chomping at the bit to take down a few posters who dared make some comments on the whole misadventure, with at least two of them turning up at a Street 172 hostelry, swinging a baseball bat, and looking for ‘the bastard owner of K440.’  He wasn’t there, but that didn’t stop them heading off to Street 51, getting more drunk. Inevitably, one of them ending up battered and bloodied after the inevitable contratemps with a tuk tuk driver.

March

Cocaine and smartphones rivalled heroin and methamphetamine as the smugglerss contraband of choice in 2016. There were cases of Koreans with suitcases full of Samsungs and Bolivian marching powder swallowed, hidden in baggage, stuffed up a chuff, and in March a Thai woman was busted with 2.5 kilos of the devil’s dandruff cunningly disguised as Werther’s Originals. Luckily, according to Neak Yuthea, a deputy general at the National Authority for Combating Drugs, “We don’t have consumers of coke in Cambodia; construction labourers could not afford it, If there are such cases of coke use in Cambodia, it is foreigners.” He then went on to wipe his nose and offer the Cambodian Daily hack “a cheeky line of the good stuff”

The political panto season began in March with a scandal involving a purdy young vixen, a bunch of ADHOC workers and CNRP #2 ‘Dirty Ol’ Kem Sokha. After some recorded heavy breathing conversations between the young lady and the randy old goat, it was decided that a major crime had been committed. Sokha retreated to CNRP HQ, 5 ADHOC staff were detained in Prey Sar and the temptress was dragged over the coals. Then in came CNRP ‘darling’ Thy Sovantha, pissed off that her name came up in the late night booty calls and demanded $1 million in compensation. It did get weirder…..

April

CNRP lawmaker Um Sam An didn’t quite get the homecoming he was expecting when returning back to the kingdom after an extended stay in the US, where he holds dual citizenship. Instead of celebrating Khmer New Year in Siem Reap, Mr. Um was lifted in the early hours and detained over comments regarding the Viet-Khmer border issues. He remains in custody, where he remarked it was safer than outside, following the killing of Dr. Ken Ley in July.

A former opposition defector to the ruling party was knocked of his perch as the ambassador to South Korea in April. Suth Dina was allegedly found to be in possession of 2.7 kilograms of gold and $7.2 million cash by the ACU. With that much loot lying about the house, Dina could benefit from plans laid out in March by interior minister Sar Kheng to build a privately run VIP prison for wealthy jailbirds, to ease Cambodia’s prison overcrowding problems. Add a KTV and massage services and Kem Sokha might have been temped out of his bunker.

In something which could be seen as a badly timed April fool’s hoax, the chief government graft fighter at the Anti-Corruption Unit decided to keep it in the family by appointing his own two sons to high ranking roles within the institution. But it was not nepotism, said spokesman Sok Eysan “It is normal. The CPP is the ruling party and has never appointed the children of the CNRP,” he said. “The CPP must appoint the youth of the CPP because we cannot appoint the youth of another party.” He went on to add “It is not nepotism,” he said. “It can only be nepotism if the people who are appointed have no knowledge. But [Mr. Yentieng’s sons] have the ability to do the work.” Well that’s that settled then.

Another case of the April lady doth protest too much was former poster sniper_m4, otherwise known as Eric Erdman(n). The story of his arrest as a fugitive kiddy porn enthusiast broke in the papers, he posted on k440 claiming his innocence, poster GavinMac once again turned into a less butch Jessica Fletcher and the truth was out; as was Erdman(n), on a plane to Florida and probation in his parents’ spare room.

By the end of April the new passenger train service was operational from PP-SHK. There have only been a few accidents with motor vehicles, several pedestrian fatalities and one derailment, so far.

May

In May loads of stuff happened, but none of it that special: lots of foreigners died, some Nigerians were busted with more cocaine, overstayers were rounded up and pictured like huddled masses in a UKIP campaign poster, some hackers got into the Prime Minister’s webpage, Koh Rong speed ferry pier went up in flames and it was really, really hot.

The bar scene in PP was delivered a blow with the passing of “Big” Mike Hsu, from Sharky Bar. In true rock n’ roll fashion he exited on the premises and was given a good send off, as were most of the bar staff shortly afterwards. RIP.

K440 drew the ire of a pink haired Australian do-gooder in this month, with as much Twitter rantings from a certain Lucy Perry, as those of President Elect, Donald J Trump. A ‘poverty porn’ fundraising campaign by Sunrise NGO (even though their accounts stand at a cool 3 mill in the red) drew widespread criticism from Cambodian expats and numerous other NGOs, and the foul mouthed tirades from Ms. Perry did little more than pour petrol on the fire. What her big boss, the formidable Geraldine Cox, felt about it all is unclear, but the anarcho-neo-punk band, Chumbawamba named their debut album 30 years earlier ‘Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records’. Nuff said.

June

The country didn’t exactly mourn the passing of an infamous gunslinger and Cambodian business magnate Teang Bun Ma in June. There were rumours from those the author knows personally that his dying wish was a pre-selected $30k coffin.

Another tycoon in the news was Sung Bonna (not the lead singer of U2), who was thrown in the slammer for writing a $400k rubber cheque. The eponymous realty group promised to soldier on without their chairman at the helm.

A bizarre cross border failed escape was picked up from Stickboy, also in June. To quote directly:

“A Frenchman who allegedly owes a few million baht in gambling debts to a Cambodian moneylender was arrested by immigration officers over the weekend for illegally entering Thailand. The story of how 32-year-old Andre Moriconi ended up behind bars at Klong Luk police station in Aranyaprathet is told several ways depending on which Thai newspaper you read but the ending in all is the same. Moriconi went to Cambodia, racked up a few mil in gambling debts, was sleeping in a bus shelter when he couldn’t flog his watch to pay his hotel bill and ended up doing a runner when the people he owed money to came calling looking for him to settle up. When he arrived at the border crossing in a panic, the officer noticed he didn’t have any entry or exit stamps for Cambodia and told him he’d need to go back and get them before he could enter Thailand. Frenchie said this was not possible as he was a wanted man and after speaking with several officers he tried to make a run for it without getting stamped into the country, a move that didn’t get him very far. When he was apprehended Moriconi was taken to the cop shop and charged with illegally entering the country. The embassy were called but there was no help available as it was the weekend so he was sent to the cells where he was said to have been wailing and crying, “I want to go back to France”.”

In positive news Cambodia was named The World’s Best Tourism Destination by European Council of Tourism and Trade – membership of The Beautiful Bays club finally paying off.

It was a year of leaking, as we have seen, and the NGO community was not immune. Maltese president of Drama Outreach Program, Alan Montanaro was found to be sending WhatsApp messages suggesting that a child Meng (El Mingo) should have his corneas harvested and described other kids under his care as “Window washers or kidney-donors the lot of them”. We’ve all been there.

Somebody who managed to hold onto their career with just a demotion was senior Education Ministry official Kry Seang Long, who was arrested in South Korea after getting frisky with his female interpreter. The ministry coughed up $12k bail to get the gropey geezer out of Seoul confinement, which he promised to pay back. His lenient punishment was, according to Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron because ‘Not serious. Not rape’. Germaine Greer would be reaching for the burdizzo, if only she knew.

July

Another barang looking for new employment opportunities was Beltie teacher ‘Carl’ who had one thing or another too many and was caught being hosed down, without his hosen on, along Street 182. Judging by the images the lack of leg covering was due to the fact that the erstwhile educator had managed to shit himself somewhere and disposed of the evidence.

Khmer440 was instrumental in sending another wrong un back home to face the music. Convicted British paedo Damian Midgley was flagged up by a poster sayonara2 in July. His photo was recognized by a reader in Siem Reap who approached the competent authorities who made the move to arrest him on Pub St. Deportation and a six+ stretch at Her Majesty’s Pleasure beckoned.

After a failed coup in Turkey, the Turkish ambassador to Cambodia requested that the Royal Government close down the Zaman International School in Phnom Penh, on the basis all Zaman instititions have close ties with the alleged mastermind behind the coup attempt. The reply from MoEYS has not been leaked but probably something like ‘Erm, cannot do, busy, where you get this number?’ before hanging up the phone.

The often farcical world of Cambodian politics took another of its regular dark turns in July, with the assassination of well-known and respected political activist Dr. Kem Ley in his regular Star Mart coffee joint. The killer was swiftly apprehended, albeit in murky circumstances and, as usual, the motives seem shaky and rumours of bigger fish are never far from the surface.

Some point to Dr. Ley’s involvement in a Global Witness report, released shortly before his killing, which exposed how much the business practices of a certain Cambodian family have made* and a glimpse into how deep the rabbit hole goes**.

*Clue – a lot

**Very far. Wanting to keep our heads, however, it is suggested you Google it, if you didn’t catch it first time round.

July was also the month that produced the Khmer440 picture of the year (above): that of the oldest meth-dealer in the world, Michael Ryan, being led to the slammer after receiving a two year term following his earlier arrest on Street 51.

August

The plagiaristic Khmer Times somehow struggles on after last year’s cut n’ paste editorials from ‘Phony’ Tony. In 2016 another editor, Terry Friel got cut n’ pasted himself, when his pretty young thing got the hump and turned stabby. The gossip mill claims it was all about a $2000 debt the Australian Ex-Editor-in-Chief borrowed from honey and fuelled her ire when he couldn’t pay back the money. Hell hath no fury like a unpaid bargirl.

Khmer440 got immortalized in print (well Amazon for Kindle) with a work of literature from former resident and onetime blogger Rob Jamieson; Killing Time in Phnom Penh. The infamous Garage Bar hostage crisis features in the work, which is still probably available to download, if you can be bothered to search for it.

Another Cambodian face(book)palm moment also came in August, when 50 failing medical students wrote to the PM personally begging for him to pass them after flunking clinical examination tests. Luckily the aptly named Dr. Quach tried to put a stop to it.

The Black Monday protest movement limped along throughout 2016, but the detention and deportation of Spanish activist and researcher Maja Bujosa Segado certainly got the attention of the international news. Bujosa Segado, who claims to have been beaten in custody, was feared to have supernatural powers by the competent authorities.  Major General Heisela of the boys in khaki was quoted as saying police officers were worried when she started taking photos of them.

“We were worried she might be a sorcerer and then take photos to do black magic on our stomachs,” he said. “Everyone knows the Spanish practice magic,” he added. “They can fly on brooms.”

Ay Carumba!

What has become known as the Streisand effect has swept the internet in recent times. The more a person tries to bury bad things online, the more attention said bad things get from the internet. The tragic case of Nicolas Plessis, a 36 year old French hotelier, who died after just 4 days in the Kingdom, from an apparent drug binge, got the SE into a full roll. A certain Jasper Overgaard Waale who runs a business specialising in helping companies take down pesky internet attention hounded Khmer440 owners, moderators, ex-moderators, the server hosts and even advertisers on Khmer440 to remove the story, succeeding only in driving it back up, and giving it a mention in this review, when 150+ other deaths have not been given a mention.  Try getting us to take this pic down also Jasper . . .

September

Cambodia is well known as a nutter magnet, indeed that is why so many of us are here, but it takes a special type of nutter to go up against the mighty K440 cabal. Remember Gregory Michael Blake from 2015? Now a successful pig farmer, I’m told  . . . . . However, September saw a man nuttier than a squirrels lunch, in the form of Peter David. So incensed was this wannabe lawyer/failed restaurateur from the City of the Pineapple Roundabout that he started making some bizarre threats to the owners of the website over social media. Quote:

“This is a problem that needs to be addressed by all Governments in Australia and in Cambodia. I can name one in Cambodia called Khmer 440 run ironically by expat Barangs. Their forums have trolls that hide behind assumed names and vilify defame, tell lies, hate, and abusive trolls, against the person, public, or Government of Cambodia and get away with this criminal behaviour, as the National Intelligence agency either does know about this site, or has not bothered to investigate these bad Expat people and close this forum down as it only promotes nothing but troll rubbish that influence the public the wrong way. In Kalgoorlie these racist trolls caused a riot.” [Sic]

Another gem: “They should do the same to Khmer 440 here in Cambodia Charge them for their posts by trolls causing trouble defaming people and hiding behind false names. Please investigate Your Excellency Hun Manith head of National Intelligence. This story of what can happen when the Administrators of the site support and promote Facebook sites that troll people. No Good comes from these sites just stirring up problems and promoting hate and untruths and willfully and criminally defaming people.Please take action against this site in Cambodia called Khmer 440 run by Expat Westerners.” [Sic]

It wouldn’t be the first time Khmer440 was threatened with being reported to high ranking Government officials in 2016.  More of which follows.

Another month and more charlie, this time courtesy of 22 year old Adelys Paola Lopez Alviarez of Venezuala was caught with almost 1.5kg of the stuff after flying in from Brazil via Ethiopia. Somebody’s stash got fatter and the guards on the lady’s wing just found a new playmate. Just say no. Another marching powder mule was apprehended shortly after. South African Jacobus Botha, was busted en route from Brazil with a belly full of blow. We learned now that Ponchentong airport has a fancy body scanner, like the ones on TV. Customs officials plan to wear sunglasses at night party like its 1999.

Transparency International released the Corruption Index 2015 in September. The Kingdom still remains strong contenders as 150/168- the 18^th most corrupt country in the world, a position where Mexico find themselves on the FIFA rankings.

October

Kem Sokha briefly left his bunker in October for his voter registration. Sam Rainsy stayed in Paris. Meanwhile, social media darling, CNRP activist-turned-Kem Sokha-suer-agent provocateur-puppet-on-a-string Thy Sovantha decided she needed more publicity this month by declaring her intentions to open a university, despite the fact she didn’t have a degree herself.

A regular on the pages of k440 for bad behavior was back up again in October. British expat Andrew Wallace, convicted human trafficker and a member of the infamous Tatai Resort brigade ran down and killed a student motorcyclist in PP whilst heavily pissed. He must have friends in high places (or a healthy bank balance) as he was released after questioning and seen on the pop at the opening party for Hops Brewery later the same week. Now if Mr. Wallace could just get that Hooters fixed up….

The Russian mafia story of the year has to go to go to good ol’ Shihanouskygrad after masked thugs, named as ‘Vladimir from Lotus Travel’ and his mob attacked expats Joel Fry and Mike Keys with baseball bats, totally merking up Fry’s knee. This is the result of some jive talk and beef stretching back 2 years to the failed Kazantip festival. Thoooose Russians….

November

A former Phnom Penh-based Scottish TEFLER got his stab on over in Myanmar in November. Harris Binotti is currently being sought after his colleague, another Brit, Gary Ferguson, was found dead after a night on the town together. Binotti, a former teacher at Western, fled to Thailand and hasn’t been seen since.

An Australian baby famer was arrested under a new crackdown of a grey legal area. Tammy Davis-Charles had moved her surrogacy business over the border from Thailand after the Land of Smiles outlawed such practices in 2014. Although the laws on surrogacy, like so many in Cambodia, are murky Ms. Davis-Charles is also accused of falsifying legal documents such as birth certificates, which could lead her into a sea of deep shit. But charging $50k a sprog, she should have enough in the piggy bank to donate to the competent authorities.

As 2016 drew towards its final curtain call, yet another high profile Brit was caught out behaving badly, and that Streisand effect came out again. David Tibbott, the chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia was allegedly spotted by numerous witnesses throwing some punches in popular late night drinking spot Pontoon. The Phnom Penh wheel came full circle when an ex-Aussie Rules footballer named Steve Morrish (also immortalized in a chapter of R. Jamieson’s novel) and no stranger to Khmer440 came to the aid of the certain rugger bugger. Needless to say, the threats of ministries and government officials fell on deaf ears (and blind eyes), the story remains up and rumours that other members of Her Majesty’s representatives in the kingdom are not exactly amused by tales of booze fuelled brawling persist.  There are grumbles within Britcham that Mr Morrish’s attempts to ‘deal with the story’ caused more harm than good.

Someone who almost got away with it (if it wasn’t for the pesky internet) was Chinese national and Deputy MD of Huawei (Cambodia and Laos) Kevin Weng. Mr. Weng was arrested by cops after drunkenly totalling a few tuk-tuks and his BMW i8 in the capital. Although local news was all over the story like a bad case of herpes, one by one the reports ‘disappeared’ from the Khmer public domain. Interestingly, the owner of the 3^rd most popular expat forum in Cambodia (after k440 and livingincambodia), Daniel Mackevili claimed in the Cambodia Daily that he was offered a princely $100 to drop the story. This ‘gift’ was not extended to scobienz, who, to be fair, could do with it, as the legal defence fees against a nutty fake lawyer, a punchy businessman and the friend of a dead French meth user are spiralling out of control.

December

Shit hit the fan in late November for social media, side-switching darling Thy Sovantha after leaked details of intimate conversations between her, Maj. Gen. HE Jr, and the big man himself promising the daft little starlet rather a lot of zeros to her bank account. As rumours began to circulate over the facts, a juicy one being of a love triangle between a certain Facebook user, a certain tycoon and a certain army bigwig an amazing thing happened . . . .  Kem Sokha was suddenly given a royal pardon on December 2.  The 4 ADHOC staff and 1 CNRP official also imprisoned on bribery charges amounting to a few hundred dollars were also set to be freed in time for Happy Merry Christmas. Pantomimes always need a happy ending. By the end of the month Sovantha was back threatening to sue everyone, including her former allies who helped her to take down her previous ally.

Fires in Siem Reap are almost as common as child molesters in Temple Town. In December it was the turn of Garden Village to go up in smoke. Although nobody was killed, it was reported a relative of the owner was injured after jumping out of a second story window.

Another nasty piece of work from the land of windmills and clogs was all over the internet at the beginning of the month after horrific videos of a young child being tortured were spread over Facebook. The sick bastard filmed abusing the young Cambodian boy was quickly named as Vietnamese national Nguyen Thanh Dung, apparently boyfriend to Dutchman Stefan Struik, a businessman and plantation owner in Mondolkiri. The hunt went out and Struik was picked up by the competent authorities and officials from the Child Protection Unit in Kampong Cham, allegedly high on meth. Thanh Dung had already escaped across the border to Vietnam, where he was picked up by local police. Beyond sickening, the story was and still is very strange. Struik, whom has bought Khmer citizenship, a successful businessman with ventures around Asia and Europe is also a budding author, writing twisted tales about young boys being tortured and sacrificed. This case is sure to go on well into 2017 and will no doubt unearth a large can of worms.

The expat community mourned the sad and untimely passing of regular k440 poster and all round sage of wisdom in a confusing country, Mr. Ken Cramer, who went under the moniker of LTO. He was always a well-respected debater and a fountain of knowledge regarding Cambodia. We will never see his like again, may he rest in peace.

And just as the year was due to come to its regular conclusion, it appeared that party heads might not be getting their ecstasy hits on December 31 after all. A troupe of Czech-Russian-Finnish-Ukrainian-Americans would-be pill pushers were busted in Paradise Sur Mer redhanded with  a bunch of  disco biscuits, various chemicals and a pressing machine. Instead of gurning and busting shapes on the dance floor, the techno heads will be swapping quite a few New Year’s Eves in crowded bars for an overcrowded cell behind bars. PLUR.

2016 saw the demise of yet more businesses, the 24 hour den of inequity, Walkabout shutting its doors for the first and last time since 1998. Quealy’s on 172, known for burgers, limited headroom and larger than life landlady was bulldozed to make way for some non-emerging development. Alley Cat also locked up for the last time in December after 11 years. Rent hikes, increased competition , interest from taxation authorities and lower tourist numbers sealed the fate of countless more enterprises across the kingdom.

So, 2016 is dead, long live 2017! With commune elections due and the build up to the biggy in ‘18, more direct flights from everywhere bringing in even more idiots, it is sure to be another surreal 365 days, more same same, but different. Until next December folks, stay safe and stay off the media front pages!

A young British couple were found dead, presumably hanged in a suicide pact, in the Sihanoukville apartment they shared on the evening of Sunday January 1st.  It is believed they died together the previous night.

Imogen Goldie-Wells, 28, and Robert Goldie-Wells, 36, were found by the owner of the apartment who came to collect a rental payment, after several calls to their phones went unanswered.  Imogen was from Camberwell in South London and Robert was from Sunderland in the North East of England.  It is not clear how long both had been in Cambodia, but Robert’s Facebook page suggests he had been in the Kingdom for several years.

Both bodies were bound, blindfolded and gagged leading to speculation that the couple were murdered.  However, Cambodian police released details of a suicide note in which the couple mentioned mental issues – including bipolar disorder and aspergers syndrome – and blamed the UK’s National Health Service for failing to care for them.

Controversial Australian film-maker, James Ricketson, 68, has been charged under Article 446 of the Cambodian Criminal Code for “receiving or collecting information, processes, objects, documents, computerised data or files, with a view to supplying them to a foreign state or its agents, which are liable to prejudice the national defence” following his arrest last week while flying a drone over a CNRP rally in Phnom Penh.

Initial reports of the arrest were confusing, with some official sources saying variously that he was arrested for ‘spying’ while others stated that he didn’t have his passport with him and was ‘living in Cambodia illegally’.

However, Mr Ricketson faced an investigating judge on Friday, was charged under Article 446 and remanded in custody.  He was sent to Prey Sar prison in Phnom Penh where he is expected to remain until a trial date is set, usually several months after arrest.

The Australian Embassy confirmed that an Australian national has been arrested and has said that he is receiving consular assistance.

Mr Ricketson is not a stranger to controversy in Cambodia, and has faced legal action in the Kingdom before. In 2014 he was found guilty and given a two year suspended prison sentence for defaming Citipointe Church in a row over his attempts to remove two girls from a refuge they managed, and earlier this year he was found guilty in absentia and fined for defaming anti-child sex abuse NGO, APLE.

Mr Ricketson is the publisher of a blog that regularly attacks a wide variety of NGOs, including APLE and Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children Fund which he accuses of widespread corruption.  He is a vociferous critic of Cambodia’s legal system and has campaigned vigorously for the release of the British convicted child sex offender and former bar owner, David Fletcher, who is currently serving 10 years for the rape of an underage Cambodian girl.

It is not clear why Mr Ricketson was operating a drone at last weekend’s CNRP rally.  He is believed, however, to have been working on a documentary about exiled former CNRP leader Sam Rainsy for several years.

Several people have been arrested in Cambodia for illegally operating drones in sensitive areas in the last twelve months.

If convicted, Mr Ricketson faces between five and ten years in prison.

From being a familiar face on Australian television, to chiropractor, to drugs busts in Sihanoukville – it’s a pretty steep decline over a couple of decades.  The star of the iconic Australian tv commercials for soft drink Solo, Mark Coutelas, 57, has been arrested by military police in his Sihanoukville guesthouse on drugs charges.

The 57-year-old appeared at Preah Sihanouk provincial court on Tuesday and was charged with the unlawful keeping, transporting or trafficking of narcotics. He is being held in Preah Sihanouk prison and will face trial at a later date.  Court spokesman Lim Bunheng said Coutelas ‘admitted’ to previously being sentenced to two years imprisonment in Thailand for ‘drug trafficking’.

Coutelas was previously arrested in Phuket in 2014 on similar offences, and was sentenced to two years in prison.

After being released, he was expelled from Thailand and seems to have arrived in Cambodia in 2016, setting up a business called Back Pain Solutions, based on his post-television career as a chiropractor.

Earlier this year he posted in his personal Facebook account: ‘Living in Sihanoukville Cambodia at this minute in Phnom Pehn. I LOVE CHANG CLUB!!! I miss you buddy. Me blacklist (sic) for (sic) Thailand 110 years (sic).’

In 2012, a collection of short stories called ‘Phnom Penh Noir’ was released, edited by the highly talented Christopher G. Moore, author of the Vincent Calvino series of books (as well as some very cerebral essays on a number of topics and a few insightful non-fiction books too).

Moore has also just released ‘Memory Manifesto: A Walking Meditation Through Cambodia’, in which he looks back at his own experiences of almost 25 years of visiting Cambodia as well as forays further back in time for the country’s own experiences. You can read a wonderful review of his new book here.

I had revisited ‘Phnom Penh Noir’ a few months back, enjoying the second reading of writers such as John Burdett, Roland Joffe, Suong Mak, Bopha Phorn, and Kosal Kheiv among others when it struck me that there hadn’t been any further Cambodian-based collections of stories since then. The next thought, unsurprisingly, was ‘Well, why not do one now?”

Not long after, a conversation ensued between myself and Mark Bibby Jackson, author of ‘Peppered Justice’ and publisher of Asia-LIFE magazine, and we took the idea a stage further to include a joint competition to try and find two promising Cambodian writers who could be included in the book, with the outright winner also appearing in July’s issue of Asia-LIFE.

As the first entries came in, and as I received submissions from other authors, I realised that the term ‘noir’ was slightly problematic in terms of this collection. Noir is perhaps one of the most contentious descriptions in literature in recent times. Everyone has their own idea of what it means, from the Chandler purists through to the modern offshoots. If we had kept it, there would likely have been an online furore from disgruntled noir fans across the region, beating a path to my door with pitchforks and burning torches. So it was quietly jettisoned with no fuss and the title finalised as ‘Mekong Shadows: Tales from Cambodia.’

The standard of the competition entries was surprisingly high given that the writers were submitting in their second or even third language. But once entries were closed, all three judges were in relative agreement as to the two winners. One thing stood out in the entries we received; there was a lack of male writers entering the competition. Both our winners were not only girls, but also under the age of 20, with our first placed winner being 18, and our second placed writer being 15. It’s great to see that the two schools the girls attend, Liger Learning Centre and Jay Pritzker Academy, encourage creative writing when we normally see emphasis only on STEM subjects. You can read the winning entry here.

One of the other things we decided at an early stage was that all profits from the book would go to a worthy cause. It was Mark who suggested the wonderful Khmer Sight Foundation and I agreed very quickly to his suggestion.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in Cambodia and most of the cases are avoidable. Health Ministry figures showed that in 2007 around 2% of Cambodians suffered blindness in both eyes as a result of cataracts, and more recent figures from 2014 stated that around 5% of the population over five years old had varying degrees of sight impairment (Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey). The good news is that over the last 20 years the prevalence of avoidable blindness has dropped by nearly 70% (The Fred Hollows Foundation). It is still a very real issue though.

In 2015 the Khmer Sight Foundation (KSF) was formed to unify ophthalmology and eye care across the Kingdom, thanks to local philanthropists and to the efforts of ophthalmologists from Australia and New Zealand who regularly donate their time and experience to reducing these figures further and to training young Cambodians. They also arrange scholarships for ophthalmology students to study abroad with the aim of making Cambodia self-reliant.

I’m very grateful for the contributions made to the book from all the writers. We have stories from well-established writers such as John Daysh, John Burdett, and James Newman among others. We also have two excellent contributions from Cambodian writers; Kosal Khiev and Ek Madra, the latter of whom has written Saraswati’s first novel by a Cambodian which is released later this year. There are stories of oppression, of genocide, of love, of hate, a sprinkling of black magic, a couple of forays into The Heart of Darkness, but also a feeling of hope. As with any collection there will be stories you love and stories you dislike; even I have my favourites but it would be unfair to the other writers to single them out. The hardest thing about putting the collection together was deciding the order the stories would go in, a process that saw several changes, but I think (hope) that the final decision is one that sits well with readers.

One of the contributors sent me an email the other day to say ‘well done’ for putting the book together and asking when the next one would be. I cast an eye back at the publication date of ‘Phnom Penh Noir’, thought of the stress of the last few months and answered – with a straight face – ‘2022’.

‘Mekong Shadows: Tales from Cambodia’, edited by Iain Donnelly and published by Saraswati Publishing, launches on August 3rd with an event at the Plantation Urban Resort and Spa in Phnom Penh, and a second event at Bookish Bazaar in Kampot on August 10th. Hard copies will be available at Monument Books and other retailers from August 4th, and the eBook version is available to pre-order now at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0749Q5ZGR

There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about press freedom in Cambodia and the troubling lack of transparency from Cambodia’s ruling elite. The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh recently issued a statement condemning Cambodian authorities for abruptly shutting down the National Democratic Institute, an NGO committed to government accountability and openness.

This reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about a matter involving the U.S. Embassy that touches on these same topics of transparency, accountability, and press freedom. It also touches on violence, drunkenness and prostitutes. Probably.

1. The Incident

About three years ago, I saw a juicy blurb in an issue of the Bayon Pearnik. You may know Bayon Pearnik as the flimsy monthly free magazine that you once reluctantly flipped through because your smartphone battery died while you were waiting for a meal at Paddy Rice.

The “Cockroach Corner” column in the August 2014 Bayon Pearnik included an interesting bit of gossip about a supposed bar fight at “Golden Sorya Mall” involving someone who worked at the U.S. Embassy. For those who are not aware, Golden Sorya Mall (a.k.a. “GSM”) is a sleazy outdoor bar complex located on Street 51, the most popular “late night entertainment” street in Phnom Penh. GSM is a very public place, quite visible from Street 51. This makes it a dumb place for a U.S. Embassy staffer to get into a bar fight, as the fight would surely be witnessed by all the pimps, whores, meth-heads, and journalists who typically frequent that area at 2 a.m.

The Bayon Pearnik column said this:

Expats in Phnom Penh have rather vivid imaginations and are prone to unreliable gossip. After reading the Bayon Pearnik’s report of the bar fight, I wanted to know if this story was true. I also wanted to learn more details about what actually happened. Was the punchy embassy guy a high ranking diplomat or a low level flunky? What was the fight about? Were any weapons used? Was anyone seriously hurt? Was the embassy man the aggressor or the victim; the ass kicker or the ass kickee?

Because I am a shit-stirring prick, wait I mean an “online columnist for a popular expatriate-oriented website,” I decided to ask for records created by the U.S. Embassy about the GSM bar fight, so that I could share those records with Khmer440’s readers.

2. The Request

If you want documents from a U.S. Embassy, you can’t just ring the bell at the embassy and ask to come in and look through their files. That’s a no go. You have to formally request the records from the U.S. State Department under the Freedom of Information Act. Then you wait a long time for someone to collect the documents from the embassy or fetch them from some huge Washington, D.C. warehouse like that one they show at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) is a fifty year old American law that provides a right of access to federal agency records, subject to a few limited exemptions. FOIA reflects our profound national commitment to ensuring an open government. The Supreme Court of the United States has observed that FOIA is “a means for citizens to know what their Government is up to.”

America’s commitment to freedom of information and government transparency distinguishes us from Cambodia and other repressive nations that we like to look down on. Just imagine asking the Cambodian government for its documents about a bar fight involving a Cambodian diplomat stationed in another country. You’d probably be stonewalled with refusals to produce information and offered laughable excuses about why those documents couldn’t possibly ever see the light of day.

Fortunately, Americans aren’t like that. Our commitment to freedom of the press is enshrined in our Constitution. Our diplomats in Cambodia, specifically, extol the virtues of press freedom and government transparency, and they urge Cambodian officials to embrace these ideals.

In 2014, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia William Todd wrote a column in the Cambodia Herald titled “The Importance of Transparency.” In that column, he implored Cambodia’s leadership to be more transparent. Quoting the popular phrase “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he asserted that “public interest is best served when governments and organizations operate in a spirit of openness and transparency.”

Ambassador Todd laid it on pretty thick:

“I cannot emphasize enough that openness and transparency is not only for the people of Cambodia – it is also good for the Cambodian government and the democratic process. In discussions with government officials and other stakeholders, I have consistently stressed the importance and the advantages of increased transparency and openness, which makes government more effective, increases confidence in elected and appointed leaders, and improves Cambodia’s image in the world.”

Ambassador Todd also used his column on the U.S. Embassy’s website to push similar themes, writing that media freedom, robust reporting, and access to information are crucial for democracy in Cambodia.

On August 12, 2014 I emailed a FOIA request to the U.S. State Department for any records from the embassy about the Golden Sorya Mall bar fight described in the Bayon Pearnik. I then sat back and waited for the freedom and transparency to roll in.

3. The Documents

I am pleased to say that a speedy two years, ten months, and four days after emailing my FOIA request, I received a response from my government. That response included a two page cover letter from the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services, enclosing nine pages of responsive records from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh about the incident. Nine pages! About a bar fight! Oh man, this was going to be good. Uncle Sam really came through.

Here are those nine pages of responsive documents I received, shedding sunlight on the GSM bar fight, in all their transparency-loving glory:

Damn. That’s really what they sent me.

4. The Shame, oh, the Shame

According to the cover letter that accompanied this nine-page bukkake of whitewash, the State Department claims that providing any information at all about this public bar fight involving an U.S. Embassy staffer “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The State Department also argues that the redacted material was compiled for “law enforcement purposes” and that releasing the information would “disclose investigative techniques.”

In legal parlance, their response is a load of horseshit. When a diplomat or other embassy staffer is assaulted or assaults someone in a public place, prompting a response from the Local Guard Force in an SUV with a K-9 team, and with that SUV then being pelted by locals as it departs the scene, this is not a matter of “personal privacy.”

Moreover, the Local Guard Force’s incident report wasn’t prepared for “law enforcement purposes.” The guard force consists of locally hired security guards who protect the embassy and its personnel; they do not “enforce” American laws or Cambodian laws. No sensitive investigative techniques are used when driving an SUV down Street 51 in the middle of the night to rescue a drunken staffer from a bar fight at an open air brothel.

The U.S. government routinely produces documents about similar incidents involving American officials who get into trouble abroad. There was a well-publicized scandal in 2012 involving Secret Service agents who hired prostitutes during a visit to Cartagena, Colombia. The Department of Homeland Security investigated the matter and generated a seventy page report about the prostitution and misconduct. It published that document online for the American public to see. Names of the whoremongering agents were withheld, but their misbehavior was described in great detail, without additional assertions of “personal privacy.”

Moreover, the State Department also maintains an online “FOIA Reading Room” which contains many released documents about Americans (including embassy staffers) who are arrested or assaulted abroad. The State Department’s argument to me that every shred of information about the GSM bar fight is exempt from disclosure due to “personal privacy” is contrary to the U.S. government’s ordinary practice of disclosing documents very much like these.

Look, I’m not naive. I anticipated a bit of gamesmanship and obstruction in response to this FOIA request. I didn’t expect them to just offer up the name of the punchy staffer, or his medical records, or a photo of the ladyboy hookers he was probably sitting with, or anything like that. But I did expect that the State Department would otherwise act like responsible law-abiding grown ups and say “OK, one of our embassy guys was involved in an altercation in a public place, here’s our redacted report showing the date, time and location of the incident along with a general description of what happened and how this incident was totally not his fault.”

Public bar fights involving embassy staffers in notorious venues where impoverished prostitutes offer sex must be a tad embarrassing to the embassy. I get that. The embassy probably prefers not to have detailed press coverage or online scuttlebutt about such incidents. But do you know what is far more embarrassing? When U.S. State Department officials blatantly and hypocritically cover up mildly scandalous events like these, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act, while simultaneously lecturing the host government ad nauseum about the importance of transparency, accountability, and press freedom.

Over two years have passed since a brutal killing shocked the relaxed residents of Otres. With the prime suspect recently released without charge and the investigation seemingly closed in both Cambodia and Russia, will we ever know who murdered Denis Goncharov?

When Denis Goncharov’s butchered body was discovered floating in a shallow ditch some 400m from Sihanoukville’s popular Otres Beach on July 19 2015, police quickly identified their prime suspect – the man’s best friend and business partner, Dmitry Sidorov.

The details of this horrific killing shocked the coastal community that was already reeling from a recent surge in violent crime and unrest linked to feuding Russian gangs.

Goncharov had been the victim of a frenzied knife attack that allegedly began while he was still riding his motorcycle. Police allege that the attacker was his passenger, and began knifing him as they travelled together.

Prime Suspect Flees Cambodia

The 29-year-old IT expert was stabbed and slashed 34 times in the back, before the killer also hacked at his throat in what one police officer said was an attempt to decapitate the victim.

Police in Sihanoukville immediately began to focus their investigation on Goncharov’s long-time friend and new business associate, Sidorov.

Some friends and relatives said they had become involved in a bitter business dispute and had been taking drugs together the night of the murder. An arrest warrant was issued and the hunt was on.

The prime suspect, however, acted even swifter than the cops. Within hours he had fled to Phnom Penh, and then to the Thai capital Bangkok, before catching a flight and returning home to Russia.

Cambodian authorities issued an Interpol arrest warrant for their fugitive and Russian police later captured and remanded the suspect in St. Petersburg on suspicion of murder.

Released Without Charge in Russia

Sidorov would be held in a Russian prison in his home city of Petrozavodsk facing murder charges for just over a year.

In the spring of 2017, he is released without charge as Russian prosecutors admit that the case against him has fallen apart.

With Sidorov’s release in Russia, and no other suspects in Cambodia, the killer who butchered Denis Goncharov in Sihanoukville seemingly remains free.

According to reports and statements from prosecutors and investigators in Russia, authorities had worked for over a year to build a case for conviction against Sidorov, but they allege that Cambodian authorities had failed to respond to all of their questions and requests for material linked to the case.

Back in 2015, Cambodian police admitted that they didn’t even know that Sidorov had been arrested in Russia. Some senior police officials couldn’t even remember the names of the victim and his alleged attacker.

Sidorov Innocent? 

According to Dmitry Sidorov, he and Goncharov had been best friends since school and he was shocked and disturbed to learn of his murder upon his return to his motherland. Upon discovering he was a prime suspect and being hunted by police, he was appalled.

His flights to Thailand and later to Russia on the day Goncharov’s body would be found had always been planned, he says, although it’s not known if he showed evidence of this to prosecutors.

Sidorov says that his family and friends were well aware of his travel plans and the theory that he had quickly decided to flee the country as Cambodian police hunted him is false.

He says that the two close friends spent the evening of July 18 together, drinking and smoking marijuana on Otres beach. He admits they shared a motorcycle on the way there, but says that they had parted ways on different motorcycles that evening. This claim, like many of Sidorov’s, also hasn’t been independently verified.

The following morning, attempting to locate his friend to say goodbye, Sidorov claims that Goncharov couldn’t be located. With a flight to catch, he left Sihanoukville just as a gruesome discovery was made and a murder investigation started.

Sidorov and his family and supporters argue that there were no business disagreements between the two of them, and no animosity at all that could trigger such a violent event. They also argue that there is no real evidence of his guilt, an argument that Russian authorities seemed to eventually agree with.

The family of Goncharov meanwhile – including his Chinese widow who lived with the two men in Cambodia – continue to allege that Sidorov had the motive and means to butcher his oldest friend, was also the last person to see him alive and fled the country for the safety of Russia after committing the horrific murder.

Whatever the truth in this murder case, with Sidorov released without charge, the prosecution abandoned in Russia and no open investigation in Cambodia, the killer of Denis Goncharov remains free and justice continues to elude his family and friends.

Jack Laurenson is a British writer and editor who previously lived in Cambodia and reported for a national newspaper here. He’s now based in Ukraine. He has posted the first part of this story on his new blog, here:

https://jacklaurenson.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/the-russian-in-the-river-the-murder-of-denis-goncharov/

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Khmer Times, and is being reprinted here by the author after being removed from the aforementioned website.

Many employment relationships end badly here in the Kingdom, but few culminate in your former employer sending a hired mercenary and convicted murderer to hunt you down.

But that’s just one of the accusations levelled against Leo Clifton, the controversial British owner of K9 Cambodia – a dog business which he started, allegedly after his previous venture selling nitrous oxide gas to party-goers was no longer viable.

His company’s website describes the outfit as an elite dog training and breeding facility – the best in Cambodia – but his growing army of critics, that includes former clients, employees and business associates, say it’s little more than a complex scam.

Clifton is accused of a staggering variety of acts of criminality, cruelty and negligence by at least a dozen individuals who have testified on the record to Khmer Times, and are now rallying against him.

Alleged Lies, Fraud and Manipulation

“Lying to customers was routine when working for Leo, it was part of the business plan,” says Wouter Symons, a dog trainer who left after he’d had enough of Clifton’s lies and abuse.

“He doesn’t subscribe to any kind of ethics we’d consider normal. He has his own set of special rules.”

“He sells people the wrong dogs for extortionate prices, advertises them as pedigrees from abroad when they’re actually inbred and from Cambodia or Bangkok puppy farms,” says Damion McCollum, one of Clifton’s most disgruntled customers.

Former associates and employees confirm this, and allege that Clifton often forced them to sell sick, sub-standard and inbred dogs.

“He even continues to advertise and provide veterinarian services when he has no qualified vet on site. It’s disgusting,” adds Symons, who now trains dogs freelance.

Clifton is also accused of levying additional taxes on the sales of his dogs and services – which can cost thousands of dollars – before having a registered business and could apply any taxes, according to multiple former employees, including former business partner Andrew Turley.

Former clients are also complaining that their dogs simply weren’t trained properly, despite having paid fees in the thousands and having surrendered their animals for months on end.

“We paid around $10,000 for advanced protection training for our dog that was supposed to take 2 months,” says Yulia Khouri, who formerly worked for the United Nations before becoming a corporate CEO in Phnom Penh.

“But after 10 months she was still untrained and we drove down to Sihanoukville to demand our dog back. Then we discovered he’d also been using painful electric shock collars on her without our permission.”

Khouri and her partner – two of Clifton’s former customers pursuing legal action – label Clifton a manipulative fraudster who should be forced out of business.

Animal Cruelty

Amongst the most disturbing accusations levelled against Leo Clifton’s K9 Cambodia are those of cruelty against the dogs in his care, who are routinely neglected according to multiple former employees.

[Name removed], a trainee veterinarian nurse held back tears as she told Khmer Times of how Clifton manipulated and coerced her into staying at K9 Cambodia longer than she wanted.

She also stayed because she felt an obligation towards the animals, she says, who had little to no medical care after the facility’s main veterinary surgeon, Dr. Ettiene Urgell, quit in protest.

“Clifton put me in some very difficult and uncomfortable situations where I had to assist an unqualified and unlicensed Khmer guy do urgent surgeries because Leo refused to spend money on the local vet, Dr. Roman Kuleshov,” said [name removed].

Dr. Kuleshov’s much-used veterinarian practice was jealously looked down upon by Clifton, according to former employees, who say he frequently said he wanted to “destroy” the popular vet.

“My young puppy was also killed by Leo’s dogs – which he “trained” himself – and that was only the first dog I saw die because of his negligence. I had to put her down myself,” says a tearful [name removed].

Dogs were routinely diagnosed and treated by untrained staff, including Clifton himself, report K9 whistle-blowers.  This resulted in multiple deaths of client’s dogs, later blamed on natural causes or other illnesses.

“He’s a barbarian that’s forcing employees to do things they’re not capable of or qualified to do,” says Dr. Ettiene Urgell, who returned to France when it became clear how unprofessional Clifton was behaving.

“He constantly ignored my professional advice, preferring instead to rely on Google or simply prescribe cannabis oil.”

One dog, who had his intestines removed and operated on by unqualified staff – allegedly at the orders of Clifton – died after a “torturous” procedure that required him to be seen by another local vet who couldn’t save him.

Clifton’s Counter-attacks

Former employees or clients who’ve spoken out against Clifton say they have suffered smear campaigns and psychological warfare in response.

Some have been labelled mentally ill or simply been shrugged off by Clifton as disgruntled and jealous former associates.

But as the weight of critical testimony against him mounted earlier this year, three very senior employees left K9 – two deciding to start their own business – resulting in their former boss deciding that words weren’t enough anymore.

“After Leo became increasingly unstable around his staff and essentially threatened the life of a female employee, it became clear to some of us that we had to leave,” says Ross O Siochain, K9’s former Sales & Marketing Manager.

“It was then that I realised that Leo was not just a paranoid fantasist, but a dangerously unstable man.”

The Mercenary For Hire

Khmer Times has seen convincing and compelling evidence that Leo Clifton, outraged by former employees leaving with intent to establish a competing business, hired a well-known mercenary in an effort to track them down and “deal” with them.

Ross O Siochan and his partner couldn’t believe their eyes when messages from K9’s Skype account – which they were still logged into – pinged onto their smartphones.

They watched, horrified, as Clifton hired a Bangkok-based man, a self-confessed “mercenary” and “deniable” for $2,500 via chats and meetings.

The infamous Australian contractor – who has been identified by Khmer Times, but won’t be named for safety reasons – once served five years in prison for murder, conspiracy to murder and attempting to overthrow a foreign government.

As he was hired to hunt down the couple, Leo Clifton simultaneously bragged to his brother in another Skype chat about what the mercenary would do to them.

“He’s due a good kicking and she’ll be so scared that she’ll pack up and leave Cambodia,” he said in a message seen by the couple, and later shared with Khmer Times.

“This is not the sort of man that you hire for his mediation skills,” the couple told Khmer Times. “We watched as Leo agreed to pay [him] the money once he had received some sort of signed contract, at this point we contacted the Thai police.”

“The last message that we saw was [name removed] reporting to Leo that he had been stopped and interrogated by Thai authorities. We don’t know if he was allowed into Cambodia and eventually he [Clifton] changed the Skype password.”

As allegations that include fraud, animal cruelty, abuse and working with international criminals mount, Clifton faces calls for criminal investigations – in Cambodia and abroad – as well as private legal action against him.

Clifton hasn’t replied to multiple attempts to obtain comment on the numerous allegations against him.

Authors note: The name of a woman in this article who previously described Clifton’s alleged activities in Cambodia back in 2015, has been removed by the author to protect her identity and dignity after she became the complainant in a 2016 police investigation in the United Kingdom related to new criminal allegations of stalking and harassment against Leo Clifton.

We need to talk, once again, about the real Leo Clifton, now also going by the name Leander Royvon. And possibly Jessica Murphy.

I didn’t ever intend to revisit the exploits of this controversial British expatriate, the alleged nitrous oxide dealer who later became an amateur YouTube-educated dog trainer, enthusiast veterinarian and owner of K9 Cambodia.

When first writing for a newspaper about the myriad allegations of fraud, abuse and animal cruelty facing this man, there was plenty of opportunity to keep on writing and plenty of material left unexplored. But life takes over. People move on and sometimes we have to accept some issues will be left unresolved and  for writers, some stories left unfinished.

The dozen or so individuals who alleged he has committed a variety of nasty crimes have also tried to move on. But for some of them, this has proven very difficult.

Legal Threats & Harassment

Last month, I was surprised to receive messages from Jessica, via an anonymous, empty and probably fake Facebook profile. The woman claimed to be Leo Clifton’s close friend.

Around the same time, the same character, this time purporting to be Clifton’s niece, was also contacting Khmer440 and the Khmer Times newspaper, who I previously wrote for.

Her uncle and/or friend – who now calls himself Leander Royvon – is a deeply misunderstood man who has been the victim of a cruel injustice, severe defamation and a complex character assassination conspiracy, she decried.

He had suffered greatly as a result of this media coverage and was seeking resolution.

Simultaneously, both the Khmer Times and myself would be bombarded with emails and messages of an amateurish but quasi-legal nature from a “lawyer” in Texas, USA, that alleged defamation.

With disappointment but not a great deal of surprise, I awoke a few days ago to the news that the Khmer Times had decided – without speaking to me – to delete my initial report on Clifton’s activities. Given the constant scandals that have beset KT and the frequent changes in editorial management I don’t judge them too much for this decision. One imagines that somebody in the newsroom decided to go for the safest option when bombarded by threats, accusations and protests.

Defamation Allegations 

The correspondences sent on behalf of Clifton (or Royvon, whatever he is calling himself today) allege that the original article published in 2015 is the work of a single disgruntled employee that has no basis in fact. The various accusations are false and defamatory.

This, of course, is a lie. I have never worked for or known Leo Clifton personally or in any capacity. In fact, my efforts to speak to him in relation to this article were stonewalled or ignored.

In truth, the article that describes a variety of accusations against Clifton is based on the testimony and physical evidence provided by nearly a dozen credible and reliable sources, not to mention further insight provided by the wider community in Sihanoukville who were well aware of his behaviour and practices but hadn’t been affected by him personally.

Alleging fraud, abuse, cruelty and the most severe crime of hiring a convicted murderer and known hit-man to track down and deal with former employees are not only disgruntled former workers, but also customers, business partners, local vets and charity workers.

Concerning the animal cruelty, there is photo evidence of untrained Khmer staff, coerced and instructed by Clifton, operating on dogs that would later suffer and die. The allegation that Clifton hired a convicted killer to chase and deal with former employees is supported by a damning series of Skype screenshots.

On the subject of his abusive, controlling and threatening behaviour there is testimony from multiple victims and witnesses.

Furthermore, many will remember also that this is a man who hired and for months worked alongside Michael Edward Harris, a known fugitive who had skipped bail in Orlando, Florida after being charged with 44 counts of child porn possession and multiple accusations of child rape.

Leo Clifton: The Abuser and Stalker?

If further analysis of Clifton’s character and behaviour is required, here is something you probably don’t know about a man who has become known by those who were close to him as an abuser, manipulator and controller.

Last summer, Clifton’s behaviour in the United Kingdom triggered an investigation by the Metropolitan Police Service which resulted in him fleeing the country, reportedly back to Cambodia.

Officers had wanted to question him in relation to allegations of stalking and harassment when he skipped the country.

Evidence shows that Clifton had cyber-stalked and tracked down a young woman who previously worked for him in Sihanoukville at K9 Cambodia. He had threatened and harassed this woman who he had seemingly become dangerously obsessed with. He contacted her at work and even contacted her employer on multiple occasions with accusations that she argues were malicious and baseless.

Police officers were so concerned for the woman’s safety following her report that they visited her at her place of work, came to her home on multiple occasions and tracked Clifton to his place of work, also in the UK. According to the alleged victim, they planned to question Clifton and caution him to stay away from her but he had already been fired and left the country.

“He’s a crazy and dangerous man,” the woman says. “He has behaved like this with other former employees too. But with me, he went out of his way to come back into my life a year later, with the clear intention of harassing and scaring me. I felt like I had no choice but to go to the police.”

The Saga Continues?

I am grateful to Khmer440 for their offer to republish the original story that the Khmer Times unfortunately decided to take offline.

In a country like Cambodia, where it can often feel impossible to get real justice, it’s important for the unified voice of these alleged victims to be heard and for the community to make up their own mind about this individual.

It also increasingly seems that we find ourselves living in a time where lawyers, politicians and the public can scream “fake news!” at the top of their lungs whenever they read something they don’t like.

Honest and principled journalists, editors and publishers need to use their voice and take a stand against this. We can’t be bullied into not writing or publishing things that questionable people are uncomfortable reading.

We’ve written satire pieces about what could be included in the Khmer440 games in the past but now some serious games are coming to Cambodia. The country has been officially confirmed as the host of the 32nd Southeast Asian Games in 2023, and the games will be held in the capital Phnom Penh. This will mark the first time the competition has ever been played in the nation, and it is an exciting prospect. It is even more thrilling thinking about what kind of futuristic games could take place at the huge event. In five years’ time, there is a real possibility that eSports and mind sports could be included in the biennial multi-sport event. But what are these things, and why would they be on the roster at the Southeast Asian Games?

eSports

Competitive gaming, otherwise known as eSports, is becoming increasingly popular all over the world and is beginning to be recognized as a serious sport. In 2016, the global eSports market was valued at $493 million but this is projected to rise to $1.49 billion by 2020. In the past, people may have frowned on the idea of actually giving medals to people who play games for a living but with technology moving forward rapidly and the games involving much higher levels of skill, the world is starting to take note. Competitive gaming has been in existence since 1972 when Stamford University students took part in a Spacewar tournament. Since then, with the advent of the internet and more advanced computers, competitive gaming has shot to new heights.

In the 2000s, televised eSports became popular, with South Korea leading the way. The Asian country began to regularly show StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions on the game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame. Then, since 2010, online streaming services like Twitch and YouTube Gaming have helped to spread eSports to the masses, and now people even watch live eSports tournaments. The International, which is one of the biggest eSports tournaments in the world, brings in millions of viewers and, in 2016, had a record-breaking prize pool of over $20 million. As viewing figures continue to boom, it would not be surprising at all to see gaming tournaments featured in major events like the Southeast Asian Games in the near future.

Mind Sports

Another type of challenge that may be considered for the games in Cambodia is mind sports. Mind sports have been in existence for a long time but have never been contested alongside physical sports in the same events. There have, however, been competitions which were solely dedicated to the games that test intellectual ability. These have included the World Mind Sports Games in Beijing in 2008 and the World Chess Championships, which have been contested annually since 1886. Mind sports encompass all types of games that require players to overcome their opponents through intellectual ability. Chess has long been deemed to be the paramount game for outwitting opponents but other offerings like poker and draughts are now also considered as strong games for assessing mental ability.

The International Federation of Poker won a provisional membership to the International Mind Sports Association in 2009 and has been making a case for inclusion in major sporting events due to the fact that professional players are proving that it is a game of skill rather than chance. If poker was to become a serious event, there are plenty of different casino game variants that could be used as well to keep viewers entertained such as Caribbean Stud and 3-card poker, which are popular with online gamers and offered by a variety of online casino sites.

The fact that there are already many televised poker events watched by thousands, such as the World Series of Poker, which was viewed by 615,000 people, suggests that games like this would be welcomed in the Southeast Asian Games. Draughts professionals also have a biennial tournament on odd years called the Draughts World Championships, with the World Title Match being held on even years. The event has been going since 1885 and has been dominated by Russia, who have won 18 times since 1992. Like chess and poker, draughts can also easily be practiced online nowadays. Mind sports can encompass many different games, and who knows, even Connect Four could be an option to include in mind sports tournaments one day.

The reason that it is a very real possibility that eSports and mind sports will be included in the Southeast Asian Games when they take place in Cambodia, is the fact that the Olympic Council of Asia has already announced that eSports will be a medal event at the 2022 Asian Games in China. They will also appear as a demonstration event at next year’s games. If eSports make the grade, then it stands to reason that organizers of these major sporting events may also consider mind sports. No matter what events take place though, the games are sure to be a hit in Cambodia.

Last year, I wrote an article bitching and moaning about the U.S. State Department’s stonewalling response to my Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request for documents about a bar fight involving an embassy staffer outside Golden Sorya Mall. That incident was described as follows in the August 2014 edition of Bayon Pearnik magazine:

The Original Response to My FOIA Request

My article discussed that three years after I submitted my FOIA request, the State Department’s FOIA Hearing Officer sent me this rather shameful collection of completely whitewashed documents:

I argued in the article that the State Department’s refusal to provide me with any substantive information about the bar fight violated the department’s FOIA obligations and was quite shameful and hypocritical, in light of how our diplomats continually implore Cambodian authorities to adopt a culture of governmental transparency.

A few months after writing the article, I did what any perfectly sane person with way too much time on his hands would do. I appealed the State Department’s improper response to my FOIA request.

The Appeal

The gist of my 7 page appeal was: (1) there’s nothing private about an embassy staffer fighting in public, (2) no secret law enforcement techniques would be revealed by producing the incident report and photos, and (3) withholding these documents is inconsistent with our government’s regular practice of releasing information when our personnel misbehave, or are the victims of violent crime, in foreign lands.

My appeal was assigned to a FOIA appeals panel of three former U.S. ambassadors:

1. 90 year-old Francis Terry McNamara, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before joining the foreign service during President Eisenhower’s first term. He was serving as Consul General in Can Tho, Vietnam in April 1975 when he led a heroic evacuation down the Bassac River at the helm of a landing craft with 300 Vietnamese employees and members their families aboard. They were picked up by a passing freighter after making it to the South China Sea. McNamara later served as ambassador to Gabon and Cape Verde.

2. 77 year-old James F. Mack, an Ivy League graduate (OK, he went to Cornell, but still) and early Peace Corps volunteer who joined the foreign service in 1966 and was promptly posted to our embassy in Saigon working for Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. 31 years later Mack was named ambassador to Guyana.

3. 81 year-old William Ryerson, also a Cornell graduate, who joined the foreign service a few days after President Kennedy was sworn in and served in Berlin during Kennedy’s famous visit there. He became an expert on our relations with Eastern Europe, and in 1991 President Bush named him the first U.S. Ambassador to Albania since 1939.

That’s a pretty good panel of accomplished men. They are men of substance, men who devoted their lives to performing essential diplomatic work for the United States, advancing freedom and democracy in difficult and dangerous Cold War hotspots. And now, in their golden years, these three former ambassadors were tasked with reading and ruling on my whiny appeal begging for documents about a knucklehead embassy staffer getting his ass kicked in a bar fight on Street 51.

The Panel’s Response to My Appeal

I am pleased to report that this panel of very wise and super-old white dudes agreed with me and granted my FOIA appeal, for the most part. They released the Local Guard Force Incident Report, which explains that on July 25, 2014 at about 10:55 p.m., an embassy guard posted in at a residence in Boeung Keng Kang 1 encountered an embassy staffer with a serious head wound emitting heavy bloodshed. The staffer explained that “the bad guy hit him and his car at Pit Stop bar #48E0 on Street 51.” He was taken to SOS Clinic for treatment.

The panel also released three previously withheld pages of photos of the incident. Those photos (two of which are nearly identical) were sent to me as poor quality black and white copies on A4 paper. They appear to show a car with a completely smashed driver’s side window as well as damage to the windshield consistent with it having been hit by a can of Anchor or similar object.

Here are even poorer quality photos I just took of these black and white copies with my phone.

The panel decided to withhold the two remaining photos of the incident on the basis of “personal privacy.” I’m guessing these withheld photos show the embassy staffer and his bloody head.

The Bayon Pearnik column mentioned that when the pugilistic embassy staffer initially drove off, locals pelted his car with “stuff.” The photos of the broken window and windshield appear to confirm the veracity of Bayon Pearnik‘s report. The Bayon Pearnik account also mentioned that after the staffer left the scene in his car, embassy SUVs and a K-9 team showed up at the scene of the fight and caused half the customers of Golden Sorya Mall to depart. The Local Guard Force Incident Report does not mention this K-9 team response at all.

The End

As I wrote in my original article:

Look, I’m not naive. I anticipated a bit of gamesmanship and obstruction in response to this FOIA request. I didn’t expect them to just offer up the name of the punchy staffer, or his medical records, or a photo of the ladyboy hookers he was probably sitting with, or anything like that. But I did expect that the State Department would otherwise act like responsible law-abiding grown ups and say “OK, one of our embassy guys was involved in an altercation in a public place, here’s our redacted report showing the date, time and location of the incident along with a general description of what happened and how this incident was totally not his fault.”

Ultimately, after four years, the State Department did the right thing, as I always expected them to do. They produced a brief, self-serving report of this incident stating that “the bad guy” attacked an embassy staffer and his car on Street 51.

I greatly appreciate that the law-abiding grown ups on the State Department’s appeals panel have a better understanding of the department’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act than the buffoonish hearing officer who sent me the original obstructionist response.

Telephone fraud has been around a long time. The phone offers anonymity between shyster and mark, a separation which makes lies easier to tell and simpler to swallow.

Ever since the 1960’s hard sales techniques have been used by, if not conmen themselves, then those on the payroll.

The first, and perhaps most well-known are “Boiler Rooms”. Often with links to the Mafia, these scams have become synonymous with high-pressure, high rewards and dodgy characters operating from places such as Spain and Thailand.

Although these cocaine sniffing, hard partying westerners are still living it up, and subject to all manner of investigations, internet technology, economic growth and easing of travel restrictions have brought new players to the game.

Less brash, less flash and with a huge recruitment pool, Chinese fraudsters, using what is known as Voice Over Internet Protocol  (VoIP) are operating in such large numbers that entire office blocks and hundreds of staff are regularly getting arrested across South East Asia.

What is VoIP?

In simple terms VoIP means using broadband internet to make telephone calls over a regular telecoms network. Using VoIP transforms your voice into digital bits, and then segments them into separate packets of data that are routed through the Internet and reassembled upon arrival at the other end.

This massively cuts down the costs of making long distance phone calls, and also means that such calls are virtually impossible to trace back to the source.  Numbers can also be ‘spoofed’, so receivers believe that calls are coming from a certain country or locality.

The ‘African Scam’

It was the biggest bust of its kind in Malaysia, and the suspects – 93 Chinese nationals and six Malaysians  were arrested on September 25, 2018, when a luxury office unit was raided in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

The group is accused of offering “shares” from public listed companies in China to lure victims into investing with the promise of handsome returns.

While the majority of the syndicate members worked as “call-centre” operators, some of them had jobs as security guards, translators and even mediators. 21 of the suspects were women.

According to Malaysian Commercial Crime Investigation Department officials, the scam centered on a false stockbroking company, offering dubious shares to the victims in China, locals and the Chinese diaspora across Asia.

Victims were even asked to analyse the stocks using the ‘Tong Da Xin’ app (which tracks share prices in stock markets around the world) before convincing them they could get huge returns on their investments within a short time.

The first few transactions might seem legitimate in order to hook the victims in, according to the CCID director, but then the shares bust, as they were fake.

Posing as a third party entity in buying stocks for the victims, all investments went straight into the syndicate’s bank accounts.

Salary for the call operators was around $600 a month, along with the costs of flights, transport, lodgings and rent for the upmarket offices.

Some estimate that in Hong Kong alone, almost US $2.4 billion is lost to these fake stock scams each year. Almost US $23 million was recently reported to have gone to the scammer syndicates in just 2 months.

The ‘Macau scam’

The term “Macau scam” was possibly coined as it is believed that the fraud either originated from Macau, or that the first victims came from there. However it is unknown whether this is fact or myth.

The scam often starts with a phone call from someone pretending to be an officer from a bank, government agency or debt collector.

The scammer will then claim that the potential victim owes money or has an unpaid fine, often with a very short window of less than an hour, to settle the payment or face “dire consequences”.

These unsuspecting victims will then be asked to make payments to get them off the hook.

With recent clampdowns on corruption, Chinese victims can then be re-targeted for more payments, or face the threat of arrest for committing ‘bribery’ offenses in relation the original payment.

‘Catfishing’

Also known as the romance scam, victims (most often men) are targeted for blackmail. Once a victim is hooked in, threats to reveal the details of steamy online chats to wives, family and bosses leave an embarrassed Lothario no other option than to hand over a sum of cash.

Once on the hook, the victim is targeted over and over in a cycle of rinse and repeat.

Cambodia

Whatever trickery is being pulled in Cambodia, it must be big. On Monday 235 Chinese nationals were arrested by police in rural southern province of Takeo.

Hundreds more at a time have been detained, from all across the country, often in co-operation with police in China. Sadly, although local media are quick to pick up on these arrests, they are less enthusiastic with looking into the hows, wheres and whys.

Cambodian authorities do, on the surface, like to be seen to be tackling the problem, with Chinese nationals paraded past cameras as they prepare to be put on a deportation flight back home, or made to squat in handcuffs with ID cards between their lips.

However, the numbers suggest that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and with the sums of cash being made, these scammers could be around the kingdom for a long time yet.

This is reprinted with permission from CNE.wtf

Controversial Australian film-maker, James Ricketson, 68, has been charged under Article 446 of the Cambodian Criminal Code for “receiving or collecting information, processes, objects, documents, computerised data or files, with a view to supplying them to a foreign state or its agents, which are liable to prejudice the national defence” following his arrest last week while flying a drone over a CNRP rally in Phnom Penh.

Initial reports of the arrest were confusing, with some official sources saying variously that he was arrested for ‘spying’ while others stated that he didn’t have his passport with him and was ‘living in Cambodia illegally’.

However, Mr Ricketson faced an investigating judge on Friday, was charged under Article 446 and remanded in custody.  He was sent to Prey Sar prison in Phnom Penh where he is expected to remain until a trial date is set, usually several months after arrest.

The Australian Embassy confirmed that an Australian national has been arrested and has said that he is receiving consular assistance.

Mr Ricketson is not a stranger to controversy in Cambodia, and has faced legal action in the Kingdom before. In 2014 he was found guilty and given a two year suspended prison sentence for defaming Citipointe Church in a row over his attempts to remove two girls from a refuge they managed, and earlier this year he was found guilty in absentia and fined for defaming anti-child sex abuse NGO, APLE.

Mr Ricketson is the publisher of a blog that regularly attacks a wide variety of NGOs, including APLE and Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children Fund which he accuses of widespread corruption.  He is a vociferous critic of Cambodia’s legal system and has campaigned vigorously for the release of the British convicted child sex offender and former bar owner, David Fletcher, who is currently serving 10 years for the rape of an underage Cambodian girl.

It is not clear why Mr Ricketson was operating a drone at last weekend’s CNRP rally.  He is believed, however, to have been working on a documentary about exiled former CNRP leader Sam Rainsy for several years.

Several people have been arrested in Cambodia for illegally operating drones in sensitive areas in the last twelve months.

If convicted, Mr Ricketson faces between five and ten years in prison.

From being a familiar face on Australian television, to chiropractor, to drugs busts in Sihanoukville – it’s a pretty steep decline over a couple of decades.  The star of the iconic Australian tv commercials for soft drink Solo, Mark Coutelas, 57, has been arrested by military police in his Sihanoukville guesthouse on drugs charges.

The 57-year-old appeared at Preah Sihanouk provincial court on Tuesday and was charged with the unlawful keeping, transporting or trafficking of narcotics. He is being held in Preah Sihanouk prison and will face trial at a later date.  Court spokesman Lim Bunheng said Coutelas ‘admitted’ to previously being sentenced to two years imprisonment in Thailand for ‘drug trafficking’.

Coutelas was previously arrested in Phuket in 2014 on similar offences, and was sentenced to two years in prison.

After being released, he was expelled from Thailand and seems to have arrived in Cambodia in 2016, setting up a business called Back Pain Solutions, based on his post-television career as a chiropractor.

Earlier this year he posted in his personal Facebook account: ‘Living in Sihanoukville Cambodia at this minute in Phnom Pehn. I LOVE CHANG CLUB!!! I miss you buddy. Me blacklist (sic) for (sic) Thailand 110 years (sic).’

In 2012, a collection of short stories called ‘Phnom Penh Noir’ was released, edited by the highly talented Christopher G. Moore, author of the Vincent Calvino series of books (as well as some very cerebral essays on a number of topics and a few insightful non-fiction books too).

Moore has also just released ‘Memory Manifesto: A Walking Meditation Through Cambodia’, in which he looks back at his own experiences of almost 25 years of visiting Cambodia as well as forays further back in time for the country’s own experiences. You can read a wonderful review of his new book here.

I had revisited ‘Phnom Penh Noir’ a few months back, enjoying the second reading of writers such as John Burdett, Roland Joffe, Suong Mak, Bopha Phorn, and Kosal Kheiv among others when it struck me that there hadn’t been any further Cambodian-based collections of stories since then. The next thought, unsurprisingly, was ‘Well, why not do one now?”

Not long after, a conversation ensued between myself and Mark Bibby Jackson, author of ‘Peppered Justice’ and publisher of Asia-LIFE magazine, and we took the idea a stage further to include a joint competition to try and find two promising Cambodian writers who could be included in the book, with the outright winner also appearing in July’s issue of Asia-LIFE.

As the first entries came in, and as I received submissions from other authors, I realised that the term ‘noir’ was slightly problematic in terms of this collection. Noir is perhaps one of the most contentious descriptions in literature in recent times. Everyone has their own idea of what it means, from the Chandler purists through to the modern offshoots. If we had kept it, there would likely have been an online furore from disgruntled noir fans across the region, beating a path to my door with pitchforks and burning torches. So it was quietly jettisoned with no fuss and the title finalised as ‘Mekong Shadows: Tales from Cambodia.’

The standard of the competition entries was surprisingly high given that the writers were submitting in their second or even third language. But once entries were closed, all three judges were in relative agreement as to the two winners. One thing stood out in the entries we received; there was a lack of male writers entering the competition. Both our winners were not only girls, but also under the age of 20, with our first placed winner being 18, and our second placed writer being 15. It’s great to see that the two schools the girls attend, Liger Learning Centre and Jay Pritzker Academy, encourage creative writing when we normally see emphasis only on STEM subjects. You can read the winning entry here.

One of the other things we decided at an early stage was that all profits from the book would go to a worthy cause. It was Mark who suggested the wonderful Khmer Sight Foundation and I agreed very quickly to his suggestion.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in Cambodia and most of the cases are avoidable. Health Ministry figures showed that in 2007 around 2% of Cambodians suffered blindness in both eyes as a result of cataracts, and more recent figures from 2014 stated that around 5% of the population over five years old had varying degrees of sight impairment (Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey). The good news is that over the last 20 years the prevalence of avoidable blindness has dropped by nearly 70% (The Fred Hollows Foundation). It is still a very real issue though.

In 2015 the Khmer Sight Foundation (KSF) was formed to unify ophthalmology and eye care across the Kingdom, thanks to local philanthropists and to the efforts of ophthalmologists from Australia and New Zealand who regularly donate their time and experience to reducing these figures further and to training young Cambodians. They also arrange scholarships for ophthalmology students to study abroad with the aim of making Cambodia self-reliant.

I’m very grateful for the contributions made to the book from all the writers. We have stories from well-established writers such as John Daysh, John Burdett, and James Newman among others. We also have two excellent contributions from Cambodian writers; Kosal Khiev and Ek Madra, the latter of whom has written Saraswati’s first novel by a Cambodian which is released later this year. There are stories of oppression, of genocide, of love, of hate, a sprinkling of black magic, a couple of forays into The Heart of Darkness, but also a feeling of hope. As with any collection there will be stories you love and stories you dislike; even I have my favourites but it would be unfair to the other writers to single them out. The hardest thing about putting the collection together was deciding the order the stories would go in, a process that saw several changes, but I think (hope) that the final decision is one that sits well with readers.

One of the contributors sent me an email the other day to say ‘well done’ for putting the book together and asking when the next one would be. I cast an eye back at the publication date of ‘Phnom Penh Noir’, thought of the stress of the last few months and answered – with a straight face – ‘2022’.

‘Mekong Shadows: Tales from Cambodia’, edited by Iain Donnelly and published by Saraswati Publishing, launches on August 3rd with an event at the Plantation Urban Resort and Spa in Phnom Penh, and a second event at Bookish Bazaar in Kampot on August 10th. Hard copies will be available at Monument Books and other retailers from August 4th, and the eBook version is available to pre-order now at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0749Q5ZGR

There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about press freedom in Cambodia and the troubling lack of transparency from Cambodia’s ruling elite. The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh recently issued a statement condemning Cambodian authorities for abruptly shutting down the National Democratic Institute, an NGO committed to government accountability and openness.

This reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about a matter involving the U.S. Embassy that touches on these same topics of transparency, accountability, and press freedom. It also touches on violence, drunkenness and prostitutes. Probably.

1. The Incident

About three years ago, I saw a juicy blurb in an issue of the Bayon Pearnik. You may know Bayon Pearnik as the flimsy monthly free magazine that you once reluctantly flipped through because your smartphone battery died while you were waiting for a meal at Paddy Rice.

The “Cockroach Corner” column in the August 2014 Bayon Pearnik included an interesting bit of gossip about a supposed bar fight at “Golden Sorya Mall” involving someone who worked at the U.S. Embassy. For those who are not aware, Golden Sorya Mall (a.k.a. “GSM”) is a sleazy outdoor bar complex located on Street 51, the most popular “late night entertainment” street in Phnom Penh. GSM is a very public place, quite visible from Street 51. This makes it a dumb place for a U.S. Embassy staffer to get into a bar fight, as the fight would surely be witnessed by all the pimps, whores, meth-heads, and journalists who typically frequent that area at 2 a.m.

The Bayon Pearnik column said this:

Expats in Phnom Penh have rather vivid imaginations and are prone to unreliable gossip. After reading the Bayon Pearnik’s report of the bar fight, I wanted to know if this story was true. I also wanted to learn more details about what actually happened. Was the punchy embassy guy a high ranking diplomat or a low level flunky? What was the fight about? Were any weapons used? Was anyone seriously hurt? Was the embassy man the aggressor or the victim; the ass kicker or the ass kickee?

Because I am a shit-stirring prick, wait I mean an “online columnist for a popular expatriate-oriented website,” I decided to ask for records created by the U.S. Embassy about the GSM bar fight, so that I could share those records with Khmer440’s readers.

2. The Request

If you want documents from a U.S. Embassy, you can’t just ring the bell at the embassy and ask to come in and look through their files. That’s a no go. You have to formally request the records from the U.S. State Department under the Freedom of Information Act. Then you wait a long time for someone to collect the documents from the embassy or fetch them from some huge Washington, D.C. warehouse like that one they show at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) is a fifty year old American law that provides a right of access to federal agency records, subject to a few limited exemptions. FOIA reflects our profound national commitment to ensuring an open government. The Supreme Court of the United States has observed that FOIA is “a means for citizens to know what their Government is up to.”

America’s commitment to freedom of information and government transparency distinguishes us from Cambodia and other repressive nations that we like to look down on. Just imagine asking the Cambodian government for its documents about a bar fight involving a Cambodian diplomat stationed in another country. You’d probably be stonewalled with refusals to produce information and offered laughable excuses about why those documents couldn’t possibly ever see the light of day.

Fortunately, Americans aren’t like that. Our commitment to freedom of the press is enshrined in our Constitution. Our diplomats in Cambodia, specifically, extol the virtues of press freedom and government transparency, and they urge Cambodian officials to embrace these ideals.

In 2014, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia William Todd wrote a column in the Cambodia Herald titled “The Importance of Transparency.” In that column, he implored Cambodia’s leadership to be more transparent. Quoting the popular phrase “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he asserted that “public interest is best served when governments and organizations operate in a spirit of openness and transparency.”

Ambassador Todd laid it on pretty thick:

“I cannot emphasize enough that openness and transparency is not only for the people of Cambodia – it is also good for the Cambodian government and the democratic process. In discussions with government officials and other stakeholders, I have consistently stressed the importance and the advantages of increased transparency and openness, which makes government more effective, increases confidence in elected and appointed leaders, and improves Cambodia’s image in the world.”

Ambassador Todd also used his column on the U.S. Embassy’s website to push similar themes, writing that media freedom, robust reporting, and access to information are crucial for democracy in Cambodia.

On August 12, 2014 I emailed a FOIA request to the U.S. State Department for any records from the embassy about the Golden Sorya Mall bar fight described in the Bayon Pearnik. I then sat back and waited for the freedom and transparency to roll in.

3. The Documents

I am pleased to say that a speedy two years, ten months, and four days after emailing my FOIA request, I received a response from my government. That response included a two page cover letter from the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services, enclosing nine pages of responsive records from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh about the incident. Nine pages! About a bar fight! Oh man, this was going to be good. Uncle Sam really came through.

Here are those nine pages of responsive documents I received, shedding sunlight on the GSM bar fight, in all their transparency-loving glory:

Damn. That’s really what they sent me.

4. The Shame, oh, the Shame

According to the cover letter that accompanied this nine-page bukkake of whitewash, the State Department claims that providing any information at all about this public bar fight involving an U.S. Embassy staffer “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The State Department also argues that the redacted material was compiled for “law enforcement purposes” and that releasing the information would “disclose investigative techniques.”

In legal parlance, their response is a load of horseshit. When a diplomat or other embassy staffer is assaulted or assaults someone in a public place, prompting a response from the Local Guard Force in an SUV with a K-9 team, and with that SUV then being pelted by locals as it departs the scene, this is not a matter of “personal privacy.”

Moreover, the Local Guard Force’s incident report wasn’t prepared for “law enforcement purposes.” The guard force consists of locally hired security guards who protect the embassy and its personnel; they do not “enforce” American laws or Cambodian laws. No sensitive investigative techniques are used when driving an SUV down Street 51 in the middle of the night to rescue a drunken staffer from a bar fight at an open air brothel.

The U.S. government routinely produces documents about similar incidents involving American officials who get into trouble abroad. There was a well-publicized scandal in 2012 involving Secret Service agents who hired prostitutes during a visit to Cartagena, Colombia. The Department of Homeland Security investigated the matter and generated a seventy page report about the prostitution and misconduct. It published that document online for the American public to see. Names of the whoremongering agents were withheld, but their misbehavior was described in great detail, without additional assertions of “personal privacy.”

Moreover, the State Department also maintains an online “FOIA Reading Room” which contains many released documents about Americans (including embassy staffers) who are arrested or assaulted abroad. The State Department’s argument to me that every shred of information about the GSM bar fight is exempt from disclosure due to “personal privacy” is contrary to the U.S. government’s ordinary practice of disclosing documents very much like these.

Look, I’m not naive. I anticipated a bit of gamesmanship and obstruction in response to this FOIA request. I didn’t expect them to just offer up the name of the punchy staffer, or his medical records, or a photo of the ladyboy hookers he was probably sitting with, or anything like that. But I did expect that the State Department would otherwise act like responsible law-abiding grown ups and say “OK, one of our embassy guys was involved in an altercation in a public place, here’s our redacted report showing the date, time and location of the incident along with a general description of what happened and how this incident was totally not his fault.”

Public bar fights involving embassy staffers in notorious venues where impoverished prostitutes offer sex must be a tad embarrassing to the embassy. I get that. The embassy probably prefers not to have detailed press coverage or online scuttlebutt about such incidents. But do you know what is far more embarrassing? When U.S. State Department officials blatantly and hypocritically cover up mildly scandalous events like these, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act, while simultaneously lecturing the host government ad nauseum about the importance of transparency, accountability, and press freedom.

Over two years have passed since a brutal killing shocked the relaxed residents of Otres. With the prime suspect recently released without charge and the investigation seemingly closed in both Cambodia and Russia, will we ever know who murdered Denis Goncharov?

When Denis Goncharov’s butchered body was discovered floating in a shallow ditch some 400m from Sihanoukville’s popular Otres Beach on July 19 2015, police quickly identified their prime suspect – the man’s best friend and business partner, Dmitry Sidorov.

The details of this horrific killing shocked the coastal community that was already reeling from a recent surge in violent crime and unrest linked to feuding Russian gangs.

Goncharov had been the victim of a frenzied knife attack that allegedly began while he was still riding his motorcycle. Police allege that the attacker was his passenger, and began knifing him as they travelled together.

Prime Suspect Flees Cambodia

The 29-year-old IT expert was stabbed and slashed 34 times in the back, before the killer also hacked at his throat in what one police officer said was an attempt to decapitate the victim.

Police in Sihanoukville immediately began to focus their investigation on Goncharov’s long-time friend and new business associate, Sidorov.

Some friends and relatives said they had become involved in a bitter business dispute and had been taking drugs together the night of the murder. An arrest warrant was issued and the hunt was on.

The prime suspect, however, acted even swifter than the cops. Within hours he had fled to Phnom Penh, and then to the Thai capital Bangkok, before catching a flight and returning home to Russia.

Cambodian authorities issued an Interpol arrest warrant for their fugitive and Russian police later captured and remanded the suspect in St. Petersburg on suspicion of murder.

Released Without Charge in Russia

Sidorov would be held in a Russian prison in his home city of Petrozavodsk facing murder charges for just over a year.

In the spring of 2017, he is released without charge as Russian prosecutors admit that the case against him has fallen apart.

With Sidorov’s release in Russia, and no other suspects in Cambodia, the killer who butchered Denis Goncharov in Sihanoukville seemingly remains free.

According to reports and statements from prosecutors and investigators in Russia, authorities had worked for over a year to build a case for conviction against Sidorov, but they allege that Cambodian authorities had failed to respond to all of their questions and requests for material linked to the case.

Back in 2015, Cambodian police admitted that they didn’t even know that Sidorov had been arrested in Russia. Some senior police officials couldn’t even remember the names of the victim and his alleged attacker.

Sidorov Innocent? 

According to Dmitry Sidorov, he and Goncharov had been best friends since school and he was shocked and disturbed to learn of his murder upon his return to his motherland. Upon discovering he was a prime suspect and being hunted by police, he was appalled.

His flights to Thailand and later to Russia on the day Goncharov’s body would be found had always been planned, he says, although it’s not known if he showed evidence of this to prosecutors.

Sidorov says that his family and friends were well aware of his travel plans and the theory that he had quickly decided to flee the country as Cambodian police hunted him is false.

He says that the two close friends spent the evening of July 18 together, drinking and smoking marijuana on Otres beach. He admits they shared a motorcycle on the way there, but says that they had parted ways on different motorcycles that evening. This claim, like many of Sidorov’s, also hasn’t been independently verified.

The following morning, attempting to locate his friend to say goodbye, Sidorov claims that Goncharov couldn’t be located. With a flight to catch, he left Sihanoukville just as a gruesome discovery was made and a murder investigation started.

Sidorov and his family and supporters argue that there were no business disagreements between the two of them, and no animosity at all that could trigger such a violent event. They also argue that there is no real evidence of his guilt, an argument that Russian authorities seemed to eventually agree with.

The family of Goncharov meanwhile – including his Chinese widow who lived with the two men in Cambodia – continue to allege that Sidorov had the motive and means to butcher his oldest friend, was also the last person to see him alive and fled the country for the safety of Russia after committing the horrific murder.

Whatever the truth in this murder case, with Sidorov released without charge, the prosecution abandoned in Russia and no open investigation in Cambodia, the killer of Denis Goncharov remains free and justice continues to elude his family and friends.

Jack Laurenson is a British writer and editor who previously lived in Cambodia and reported for a national newspaper here. He’s now based in Ukraine. He has posted the first part of this story on his new blog, here:

https://jacklaurenson.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/the-russian-in-the-river-the-murder-of-denis-goncharov/

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Khmer Times, and is being reprinted here by the author after being removed from the aforementioned website.

Many employment relationships end badly here in the Kingdom, but few culminate in your former employer sending a hired mercenary and convicted murderer to hunt you down.

But that’s just one of the accusations levelled against Leo Clifton, the controversial British owner of K9 Cambodia – a dog business which he started, allegedly after his previous venture selling nitrous oxide gas to party-goers was no longer viable.

His company’s website describes the outfit as an elite dog training and breeding facility – the best in Cambodia – but his growing army of critics, that includes former clients, employees and business associates, say it’s little more than a complex scam.

Clifton is accused of a staggering variety of acts of criminality, cruelty and negligence by at least a dozen individuals who have testified on the record to Khmer Times, and are now rallying against him.

Alleged Lies, Fraud and Manipulation

“Lying to customers was routine when working for Leo, it was part of the business plan,” says Wouter Symons, a dog trainer who left after he’d had enough of Clifton’s lies and abuse.

“He doesn’t subscribe to any kind of ethics we’d consider normal. He has his own set of special rules.”

“He sells people the wrong dogs for extortionate prices, advertises them as pedigrees from abroad when they’re actually inbred and from Cambodia or Bangkok puppy farms,” says Damion McCollum, one of Clifton’s most disgruntled customers.

Former associates and employees confirm this, and allege that Clifton often forced them to sell sick, sub-standard and inbred dogs.

“He even continues to advertise and provide veterinarian services when he has no qualified vet on site. It’s disgusting,” adds Symons, who now trains dogs freelance.

Clifton is also accused of levying additional taxes on the sales of his dogs and services – which can cost thousands of dollars – before having a registered business and could apply any taxes, according to multiple former employees, including former business partner Andrew Turley.

Former clients are also complaining that their dogs simply weren’t trained properly, despite having paid fees in the thousands and having surrendered their animals for months on end.

“We paid around $10,000 for advanced protection training for our dog that was supposed to take 2 months,” says Yulia Khouri, who formerly worked for the United Nations before becoming a corporate CEO in Phnom Penh.

“But after 10 months she was still untrained and we drove down to Sihanoukville to demand our dog back. Then we discovered he’d also been using painful electric shock collars on her without our permission.”

Khouri and her partner – two of Clifton’s former customers pursuing legal action – label Clifton a manipulative fraudster who should be forced out of business.

Animal Cruelty

Amongst the most disturbing accusations levelled against Leo Clifton’s K9 Cambodia are those of cruelty against the dogs in his care, who are routinely neglected according to multiple former employees.

[Name removed], a trainee veterinarian nurse held back tears as she told Khmer Times of how Clifton manipulated and coerced her into staying at K9 Cambodia longer than she wanted.

She also stayed because she felt an obligation towards the animals, she says, who had little to no medical care after the facility’s main veterinary surgeon, Dr. Ettiene Urgell, quit in protest.

“Clifton put me in some very difficult and uncomfortable situations where I had to assist an unqualified and unlicensed Khmer guy do urgent surgeries because Leo refused to spend money on the local vet, Dr. Roman Kuleshov,” said [name removed].

Dr. Kuleshov’s much-used veterinarian practice was jealously looked down upon by Clifton, according to former employees, who say he frequently said he wanted to “destroy” the popular vet.

“My young puppy was also killed by Leo’s dogs – which he “trained” himself – and that was only the first dog I saw die because of his negligence. I had to put her down myself,” says a tearful [name removed].

Dogs were routinely diagnosed and treated by untrained staff, including Clifton himself, report K9 whistle-blowers.  This resulted in multiple deaths of client’s dogs, later blamed on natural causes or other illnesses.

“He’s a barbarian that’s forcing employees to do things they’re not capable of or qualified to do,” says Dr. Ettiene Urgell, who returned to France when it became clear how unprofessional Clifton was behaving.

“He constantly ignored my professional advice, preferring instead to rely on Google or simply prescribe cannabis oil.”

One dog, who had his intestines removed and operated on by unqualified staff – allegedly at the orders of Clifton – died after a “torturous” procedure that required him to be seen by another local vet who couldn’t save him.

Clifton’s Counter-attacks

Former employees or clients who’ve spoken out against Clifton say they have suffered smear campaigns and psychological warfare in response.

Some have been labelled mentally ill or simply been shrugged off by Clifton as disgruntled and jealous former associates.

But as the weight of critical testimony against him mounted earlier this year, three very senior employees left K9 – two deciding to start their own business – resulting in their former boss deciding that words weren’t enough anymore.

“After Leo became increasingly unstable around his staff and essentially threatened the life of a female employee, it became clear to some of us that we had to leave,” says Ross O Siochain, K9’s former Sales & Marketing Manager.

“It was then that I realised that Leo was not just a paranoid fantasist, but a dangerously unstable man.”

The Mercenary For Hire

Khmer Times has seen convincing and compelling evidence that Leo Clifton, outraged by former employees leaving with intent to establish a competing business, hired a well-known mercenary in an effort to track them down and “deal” with them.

Ross O Siochan and his partner couldn’t believe their eyes when messages from K9’s Skype account – which they were still logged into – pinged onto their smartphones.

They watched, horrified, as Clifton hired a Bangkok-based man, a self-confessed “mercenary” and “deniable” for $2,500 via chats and meetings.

The infamous Australian contractor – who has been identified by Khmer Times, but won’t be named for safety reasons – once served five years in prison for murder, conspiracy to murder and attempting to overthrow a foreign government.

As he was hired to hunt down the couple, Leo Clifton simultaneously bragged to his brother in another Skype chat about what the mercenary would do to them.

“He’s due a good kicking and she’ll be so scared that she’ll pack up and leave Cambodia,” he said in a message seen by the couple, and later shared with Khmer Times.

“This is not the sort of man that you hire for his mediation skills,” the couple told Khmer Times. “We watched as Leo agreed to pay [him] the money once he had received some sort of signed contract, at this point we contacted the Thai police.”

“The last message that we saw was [name removed] reporting to Leo that he had been stopped and interrogated by Thai authorities. We don’t know if he was allowed into Cambodia and eventually he [Clifton] changed the Skype password.”

As allegations that include fraud, animal cruelty, abuse and working with international criminals mount, Clifton faces calls for criminal investigations – in Cambodia and abroad – as well as private legal action against him.

Clifton hasn’t replied to multiple attempts to obtain comment on the numerous allegations against him.

Authors note: The name of a woman in this article who previously described Clifton’s alleged activities in Cambodia back in 2015, has been removed by the author to protect her identity and dignity after she became the complainant in a 2016 police investigation in the United Kingdom related to new criminal allegations of stalking and harassment against Leo Clifton.

We need to talk, once again, about the real Leo Clifton, now also going by the name Leander Royvon. And possibly Jessica Murphy.

I didn’t ever intend to revisit the exploits of this controversial British expatriate, the alleged nitrous oxide dealer who later became an amateur YouTube-educated dog trainer, enthusiast veterinarian and owner of K9 Cambodia.

When first writing for a newspaper about the myriad allegations of fraud, abuse and animal cruelty facing this man, there was plenty of opportunity to keep on writing and plenty of material left unexplored. But life takes over. People move on and sometimes we have to accept some issues will be left unresolved and  for writers, some stories left unfinished.

The dozen or so individuals who alleged he has committed a variety of nasty crimes have also tried to move on. But for some of them, this has proven very difficult.

Legal Threats & Harassment

Last month, I was surprised to receive messages from Jessica, via an anonymous, empty and probably fake Facebook profile. The woman claimed to be Leo Clifton’s close friend.

Around the same time, the same character, this time purporting to be Clifton’s niece, was also contacting Khmer440 and the Khmer Times newspaper, who I previously wrote for.

Her uncle and/or friend – who now calls himself Leander Royvon – is a deeply misunderstood man who has been the victim of a cruel injustice, severe defamation and a complex character assassination conspiracy, she decried.

He had suffered greatly as a result of this media coverage and was seeking resolution.

Simultaneously, both the Khmer Times and myself would be bombarded with emails and messages of an amateurish but quasi-legal nature from a “lawyer” in Texas, USA, that alleged defamation.

With disappointment but not a great deal of surprise, I awoke a few days ago to the news that the Khmer Times had decided – without speaking to me – to delete my initial report on Clifton’s activities. Given the constant scandals that have beset KT and the frequent changes in editorial management I don’t judge them too much for this decision. One imagines that somebody in the newsroom decided to go for the safest option when bombarded by threats, accusations and protests.

Defamation Allegations 

The correspondences sent on behalf of Clifton (or Royvon, whatever he is calling himself today) allege that the original article published in 2015 is the work of a single disgruntled employee that has no basis in fact. The various accusations are false and defamatory.

This, of course, is a lie. I have never worked for or known Leo Clifton personally or in any capacity. In fact, my efforts to speak to him in relation to this article were stonewalled or ignored.

In truth, the article that describes a variety of accusations against Clifton is based on the testimony and physical evidence provided by nearly a dozen credible and reliable sources, not to mention further insight provided by the wider community in Sihanoukville who were well aware of his behaviour and practices but hadn’t been affected by him personally.

Alleging fraud, abuse, cruelty and the most severe crime of hiring a convicted murderer and known hit-man to track down and deal with former employees are not only disgruntled former workers, but also customers, business partners, local vets and charity workers.

Concerning the animal cruelty, there is photo evidence of untrained Khmer staff, coerced and instructed by Clifton, operating on dogs that would later suffer and die. The allegation that Clifton hired a convicted killer to chase and deal with former employees is supported by a damning series of Skype screenshots.

On the subject of his abusive, controlling and threatening behaviour there is testimony from multiple victims and witnesses.

Furthermore, many will remember also that this is a man who hired and for months worked alongside Michael Edward Harris, a known fugitive who had skipped bail in Orlando, Florida after being charged with 44 counts of child porn possession and multiple accusations of child rape.

Leo Clifton: The Abuser and Stalker?

If further analysis of Clifton’s character and behaviour is required, here is something you probably don’t know about a man who has become known by those who were close to him as an abuser, manipulator and controller.

Last summer, Clifton’s behaviour in the United Kingdom triggered an investigation by the Metropolitan Police Service which resulted in him fleeing the country, reportedly back to Cambodia.

Officers had wanted to question him in relation to allegations of stalking and harassment when he skipped the country.

Evidence shows that Clifton had cyber-stalked and tracked down a young woman who previously worked for him in Sihanoukville at K9 Cambodia. He had threatened and harassed this woman who he had seemingly become dangerously obsessed with. He contacted her at work and even contacted her employer on multiple occasions with accusations that she argues were malicious and baseless.

Police officers were so concerned for the woman’s safety following her report that they visited her at her place of work, came to her home on multiple occasions and tracked Clifton to his place of work, also in the UK. According to the alleged victim, they planned to question Clifton and caution him to stay away from her but he had already been fired and left the country.

“He’s a crazy and dangerous man,” the woman says. “He has behaved like this with other former employees too. But with me, he went out of his way to come back into my life a year later, with the clear intention of harassing and scaring me. I felt like I had no choice but to go to the police.”

The Saga Continues?

I am grateful to Khmer440 for their offer to republish the original story that the Khmer Times unfortunately decided to take offline.

In a country like Cambodia, where it can often feel impossible to get real justice, it’s important for the unified voice of these alleged victims to be heard and for the community to make up their own mind about this individual.

It also increasingly seems that we find ourselves living in a time where lawyers, politicians and the public can scream “fake news!” at the top of their lungs whenever they read something they don’t like.

Honest and principled journalists, editors and publishers need to use their voice and take a stand against this. We can’t be bullied into not writing or publishing things that questionable people are uncomfortable reading.

We’ve written satire pieces about what could be included in the Khmer440 games in the past but now some serious games are coming to Cambodia. The country has been officially confirmed as the host of the 32nd Southeast Asian Games in 2023, and the games will be held in the capital Phnom Penh. This will mark the first time the competition has ever been played in the nation, and it is an exciting prospect. It is even more thrilling thinking about what kind of futuristic games could take place at the huge event. In five years’ time, there is a real possibility that eSports and mind sports could be included in the biennial multi-sport event. But what are these things, and why would they be on the roster at the Southeast Asian Games?

eSports

Competitive gaming, otherwise known as eSports, is becoming increasingly popular all over the world and is beginning to be recognized as a serious sport. In 2016, the global eSports market was valued at $493 million but this is projected to rise to $1.49 billion by 2020. In the past, people may have frowned on the idea of actually giving medals to people who play games for a living but with technology moving forward rapidly and the games involving much higher levels of skill, the world is starting to take note. Competitive gaming has been in existence since 1972 when Stamford University students took part in a Spacewar tournament. Since then, with the advent of the internet and more advanced computers, competitive gaming has shot to new heights.

In the 2000s, televised eSports became popular, with South Korea leading the way. The Asian country began to regularly show StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions on the game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame. Then, since 2010, online streaming services like Twitch and YouTube Gaming have helped to spread eSports to the masses, and now people even watch live eSports tournaments. The International, which is one of the biggest eSports tournaments in the world, brings in millions of viewers and, in 2016, had a record-breaking prize pool of over $20 million. As viewing figures continue to boom, it would not be surprising at all to see gaming tournaments featured in major events like the Southeast Asian Games in the near future.

Mind Sports

Another type of challenge that may be considered for the games in Cambodia is mind sports. Mind sports have been in existence for a long time but have never been contested alongside physical sports in the same events. There have, however, been competitions which were solely dedicated to the games that test intellectual ability. These have included the World Mind Sports Games in Beijing in 2008 and the World Chess Championships, which have been contested annually since 1886. Mind sports encompass all types of games that require players to overcome their opponents through intellectual ability. Chess has long been deemed to be the paramount game for outwitting opponents but other offerings like poker and draughts are now also considered as strong games for assessing mental ability.

The International Federation of Poker won a provisional membership to the International Mind Sports Association in 2009 and has been making a case for inclusion in major sporting events due to the fact that professional players are proving that it is a game of skill rather than chance. If poker was to become a serious event, there are plenty of different casino game variants that could be used as well to keep viewers entertained such as Caribbean Stud and 3-card poker, which are popular with online gamers and offered by a variety of online casino sites.

The fact that there are already many televised poker events watched by thousands, such as the World Series of Poker, which was viewed by 615,000 people, suggests that games like this would be welcomed in the Southeast Asian Games. Draughts professionals also have a biennial tournament on odd years called the Draughts World Championships, with the World Title Match being held on even years. The event has been going since 1885 and has been dominated by Russia, who have won 18 times since 1992. Like chess and poker, draughts can also easily be practiced online nowadays. Mind sports can encompass many different games, and who knows, even Connect Four could be an option to include in mind sports tournaments one day.

The reason that it is a very real possibility that eSports and mind sports will be included in the Southeast Asian Games when they take place in Cambodia, is the fact that the Olympic Council of Asia has already announced that eSports will be a medal event at the 2022 Asian Games in China. They will also appear as a demonstration event at next year’s games. If eSports make the grade, then it stands to reason that organizers of these major sporting events may also consider mind sports. No matter what events take place though, the games are sure to be a hit in Cambodia.