Allegations of embezzlement continue to swirl around the Ministry of Land Management, with the owner of a Phnom Penh construction supply store claiming that falsified receipts from his company were submitted to the ministry, according to documents obtained Monday.
Nam Bun Leang, Kang Meas Construction Supply shop owner, issued a letter Thursday claiming that his store had not sold about $5,000 worth of materials billed by the ministry’s finance department.
“The items and the signature on those receipts do not belong to my shop,” Nam Bun Leang wrote in the letter to Land Management Minister Im Chhun Lim and National Audit Authority and Finance Ministry investigators who are checking allegations of fraud at the ministry.
“My shop logo and address have been used in a fraud,” he wrote.
He said that 18 items totaling $5,591 and listed on three receipts were never purchased at his shop. Copies of the receipts are dated May 11 and May 25, 2005.
“I would like to deny [issuing] those receipts and not be responsible for any wrongdoing before the law,” he wrote.
Nam Bun Leang could not be contacted for comment, but a woman who answered his mobile phone and identified herself as his wife said that her husband wrote the letter.
“It belongs to him, he wrote it,” she said, declining to reveal her name.
Government officials had approached her husband recently for an explanation of the receipts, which she said were faked.
Finance department director Phou Vuthy denied any fraud had been committed when contacted by telephone on Tuesday.
He said all transactions at the ministry were made after discussion with the procurement department.
“If there were no goods bought, then the committee would not sign for them,” he said. “There is a document. There are goods,” he added.
