Teng Bunma

Teng Bunma (Khmer: ថេង ប៊ុនម៉ា; 1941 – 17 June 2016), also written as Teng Boonma, Theng Boonma, and Theng Bunma, was one of the wealthiest businessmen in Cambodia.[1] He was one the founders of Thai Boon Roong Group and, along with Sok Kong and Meng Retthy, he was well known as one of the “four tigers” of the Cambodian economy after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, between the 1980s-2000s.[2]

In this Cambodian name, the surname is Teng. In accordance with Cambodian custom, this person should be referred to by the given name, Bunma.
Neak Oknha

Teng Bunma
ថេង ប៊ុនម៉ា
Teng Bunma sitting at a business meeting
Born1941
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Died17 June 2016
Occupations
  • Business magnate
  • investor
  • philanthropist
Known forCo-founder and first president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce
TitleLok Oknha

Biography

Origin

Teng Bunma was of Chinese Cambodian descent.[3]

Bringing Cambodia back to democracy and back to business (1990-1997)

Teng Bunma was one of the first Cambodian businesspeople to invest significantly in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Having spent much of his life in Thailand, like many of Cambodia’s early tycoons he began cutting informal deals with the country’s government in the 1980s, before the economy had officially opened.[4]

In the early 1990s, Teng Bunma bankrolled key battles in the continued war against the Khmer Rouge.[5] However, Sam Rainsy began accusing Teng Bunma of gold smuggling and customs fraud, and placed him at the center of a wide circle of drug traffickers. In October 1994, this led to a showdown between the two over a Phnom Penh market development that had dispossessed local vendors. Thereafter, Sam Rainsy was dumped from the Cabinet, kicked out of the Funcinpec, and stripped from his seat in Parliament in June 1995.[6]

Teng Bunma is a key example of how the emergence of free market policies in the late 1980s and the rapid privatization of common resources and state assets, legalised the businesses of former traffickers and helped them set up companies which dominate the Cambodian private sector today.[7] In order to bring an end to the ongoing civil war, he bankrolled any groups that were ready to fight against the last Khmer rouge warriors and in return he was awarded state contracts and licences to monopolise particular types of imports. Thus, with his Cambodian business partner Sok Kong, chairman of Sokimex, he helped to fund the recapture of Pailin from the Khmer Rouge in 1994, where he later opened his own casino.[8]

In late 1995, Teng Bunma was elected as the first president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce.

Teng Bunma invested heavily in the private sector, especially in real estate, but also supported the development of public infrastructure, such as the construction of “Hun Sen Park” in Phnom Penh in 1996.

Involvement in the 1997 coup
Main article: 1997 Cambodian coup d'état

Rather than chose a side, Teng Bunma was notorious for supporting a plurality of political actors in Cambodia from party officials to royalist party rebels, while others accused him of suppressing the voices critical of the Cambodian People's Party;[9] in 1994, he gave the government an interest-free loan to help make up a budget shortfall. He also donated a bullet-proof Mercedes limousine to Hun Sen, and a $1.8 million aircraft to Norodom Ranariddh, the joint prime minister between 1993 and 1997. It has also been alleged that Teng Bunma was also a financier of a band of politicians who launched a failed coup against Hun Sen in 1994, and was thought to have been close to Hun Sen’s rivals within the Cambodian People's Party, Interior Minister Sar Kheng and National Assembly-chair Chea Sim.

Teng Bunma, then Cambodia's wealthiest businessman, traveled to Beijing on a special mission shortly before the coup of the 1997 coup d'état led by Hun Sen.[10] Teng Bunma later boasted during a press conference[11] of funding Hun Sen’s coup in 1997, providing also material help by lending his own fleet of helicopters to transfer troops to Western Cambodia.[12] Hun Sen acknowledged that without the financial support of Teng Bunma, his coup would have failed.[13] In October 1997, Teng Bunma received a timber concession of one million acres from the Cambodian government.[14]

Facing international warrants: Medellin on the Mekong (1997-2000)

In June 1998, Thailand issued an arrest warrant against Teng Bunma on fraud charges. Police determinations took place also in Hong Kong in 1999: there Bunma had submitted a falsified passport for the registration of its enterprise "to Thai Boon Roong". A 1996 article ("Medellin on the Mekong") in the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, by United States journalist Nate Thayer, described Teng Bunma as a significant figure in Cambodia's international drug-smuggling trade.[15] In 1996, he was named in the United States campaign finance controversy during which the Chinese allegedly attempted to influence domestic American politics prior to and during the Clinton administration. Though he was blocked from entering the United States,[16] Teng Bunma received a US visa in 1998.[17]

In 1999, King Norodom Sihanouk publicly refused a luxury car that Teng Bunma had offered him, on the grounds that he was being investigated by the United States of America.[18] However, Hun Sen himself intervened to award diplomatic immunity to Teng Bunma for falsifying immigration documents, which was considered abusing ambassadorial powers to evade the law by some human rights group.[19]

The godfather of the Cambodian booming economy (2000-2016)

At the beginning of the third millennium, Teng Bunma had become "one of the most powerful men in Cambodia",[20] "Cambodia's best-known and wealthiest businessman with total assets estimated at around $400 million."[21] At that time, he began investing in major construction projects worth more 50 millions dollars[22] and to diversify his portfolio with a wider range of activities, such as growing cotton.[23] He took an important role of leadership in the business community to the point of becoming a "kingmaker".[24] In 2000, Guo Dongpo, who was the director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office office in Beijing, met Teng Bunma to ask for his assistance in controlling unruly mainland gang activity in the Cambodia,[25] as the latter had become "legendary" among the Chinese Khmer community.[26]

Later years and death

Teng Bunma passed away at the age of 75 on June 17, 2016 at 12.45pm in a hospital in Phnom Penh by natural causes,[27] leaving the 133 story Thai Boon Roong Twin Tower World Trade Center in Phnom Penh, located next to Nagaworld, unfinished.

Legacy

A real estate empire

Teng Bunma left being him one of the largest real estate empires in Cambodia. He owned the luxury Intercontinental hotel in Phnom Penh[28] and Rasmei Kampuchea,[3] the country's most influential newspaper. His son's company, in partnership with foreign investors, owns the Caesar international casino in Pailin, a mining town in western Cambodia.[29]

Cambodian Chamber of Commerce

Teng Bunma was elected as the first president of Cambodia's Chamber of Commerce in 1995, a useful position for networking in a country where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small group of closely connected politicians, military officials and businessmen.[30]

The forefather of Hun Sen's elite pack
Main article: Oknha

In a 2015 paper, Teng Bunma was described as the prototype of the new Khmer oknha by Michiel Verver and Heidi Schnetzinger who explained the “elite pact” between the business and political elites through the oknha system of Cambodia.[31]

Character

Teng Bunma has been described as "trigger-happy tycoon" following incidents where he used or brandished hand guns. In the first incident he shot out a $3000 tire of an airplane on the tarmac after complaining that he was frustrated with the airline's service. "I lost my temper and control and had to shoot one of the plane's tires. I wanted to shoot more of them, to make sure that all were flat, but there were a lot of passengers surrounding the plane.".[32] In the second incident he brandished a gun inside an airplane and demanded the crew delay takeoff until his late friends arrived.[33]

Awards and recognition

Teng Bunma received an honorary degree from Iowa Wesleyan University at the request of his business partner, Ted Sioeng.[16][34]

References
  1. Caitlin O'Connor, Joyce Johnson, Harvey Shapiro, Susan Perry (November 2000). Open City #8: Beautiful to Strangers. Grove Press. p. 88. ISBN 1-890447-19-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. "Oknha Theng Bunma Passes Away in Phnom Penh". www.realestate.com.kh. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  3. "Teng Boonma: The man with the money". The Phnom Penh Post. 1996-05-17. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  4. "The 'Respectable' Faces that Help Cambodia's Elite Loot the Country". www.rfa.org. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  5. Hughes, Caroline (2011). Cambodia's economic transformation. Nias Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-87-7694-083-6. OCLC 880307464.
  6. Strangio, Sebastian (2014-11-28). Hun Sen's Cambodia. Yale University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-300-21014-9.
  7. Hughes, C. (2010), "Good governance reform in Cambodia", The elephant in the room: politics and the development problem., Asia Research Centre Policy Monograph, pp. 69–94, retrieved 2022-03-02
  8. Carroll, Toby; Hameiri, Shahar; Jones, Lee (2020-03-03). The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Politics and Uneven Development under Hyperglobalisation. Springer Nature. p. 115. ISBN 978-3-030-28255-4.
  9. Hughes, Caroline (2003). The political economy of Cambodia's transition, 1991-2001. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-203-22175-3. OCLC 56909276.
  10. Smith, Craig S. (1997-07-17). "Cambodia Coup Highlights China's New Clout in Region". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
  11. Cousens, Elizabeth M.; Kumar, Chetan; Chetan, Kumar; Wermester, Karin (2001). Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-55587-946-4.
  12. Hutt, David (2021-05-25). "Hun Sen tackles Cambodia's once untouchable tycoons". Asia Times. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  13. Karbaum, Markus (2008). Kambodscha unter Hun Sen: informelle Institutionen, politische Kultur und Herrschaftslegitimität (in German). LIT Verlag Münster. p. 216. ISBN 978-3-8258-1645-2.
  14. Cousens, Elizabeth M.; Kumar, Chetan; Chetan, Kumar; Wermester, Karin (2001). Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-55587-946-4.
  15. Thayer, Nate (1995-11-23). "Cambodia: Asia's New Narco-State? Medellin on the Mekong". Far Eastern Economic Review.
  16. United States Congress House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight (1998). Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law: Interim Report : Sixth Report. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 2147.
  17. Far Eastern Economic Review. Review Publishing Company Limited. 1998. p. 13.
  18. "Les indiscrets - Monde". LExpress.fr (in French). 1999-08-19. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  19. "Diplomatic immunity: You're spoiling us, Mr. Ambassador!". Global Witness. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  20. Stanford Journal of International Law. Stanford University, School of Law. 2000. p. 132.
  21. Funston, N. John (2001). Government and Politics in Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. p. 60. ISBN 978-981-230-133-8.
  22. Faure, Guy; Hoyrup, David (2007). La présence économique européenne en Asie du Sud-Est (in French). Indes savantes. p. 198. ISBN 978-2-84654-177-0.
  23. Country Report: Cambodia, Laos. Economist Intelligence Unit. 2000. p. 21.
  24. Gottesman, Evan (2004). Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building. Silkworm Books. p. 357. ISBN 978-974-9575-52-9.
  25. To, James Jiann Hua (2014-05-15). Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese. BRILL. p. 260. ISBN 978-90-04-27228-6.
  26. 吳志偉 (2013-01-01). 幸福在路上：一個旅人的泰柬越行攝筆記 (in Chinese). 輕工業出版社. ISBN 978-7-5019-8929-4.
  27. "Oknha Teng Bunma of Thai Boon Roong Group Passes Away". FRESH NEWS. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  28. "Teng Boonma's achievements noted by a handful". The Phnom Penh Post. 2016-06-23. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  29. "Pailin casino ready to roll". The Phnom Penh Post. 1998-07-17. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  30. "Teng Boonma elected president of Chamber of Commerce". The Phnom Penh Post. Reuters. 1995-10-20. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  31. Verver, Michiel; Schnetzinger, Heidi (2015). "The Institutionalisation of Oknha: Cambodian Entrepreneurship at the Interface of Business and Politics". Journal of Contemporary Asia. 45 (1): 48–70. doi:10.1080/00472336.2014.891147. S2CID 143296208.
  32. "Gunslinger tycoons". The Phnom Penh Post. 2012-10-12. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  33. "Cambodian tycoon pulls pistol to delay airliner takeoff for friends". Associated Press News. 1997-07-30.
  34. Gilley, Bruce (1998-01-13). "A Democratic Donor's Cambodian Connection". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
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