The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group has reached a compensation deal with more than 1,000 Cambodian families involved in a land dispute with a sugar company it funded, officials at the bank and human rights groups said on Thursday.
Australia’s fourth-largest lender provided a loan about nine years ago to Phnom Penh Sugar Company, a subsidiary of Cambodia’s diversified L.Y.P. Group that is run by a Ly Yong Phat, a Cambodian senator and advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen.
At the time the company was involved in a land dispute with 1,200 mainly farming families in southern Kampong Speu Province, who said they were offered little compensation for land they had worked for years that was awarded to the firm for a plantation and refinery.
