Offering to set an example to other Cambodian personalities, King Norodom Sihanouk disclosed his net worth in a statement posted on his Web site last week.
King Sihanouk said he has a total of about $56,859 stashed in one bank account in France and $131,479 in another bank in China. He added that he owns only one house, located in Phnom Penh and currently occupied by the North Korean Embassy.
“I have always most loathed to the highest degree corruption in all its guises,” the King wrote in the statement, dated Thursday. “Up to now, no Khmer personality has dared to make an official statement of his finances. Me, Norodom Sihanouk, I have the honor of declaring…all my finances.”
The money in his Chinese bank account, he said, is what’s left of Chinese funding for his missions as president of the post-Pol Pot Party of Democratic Kampuchea and president of the Supreme National Council from 1991 to 1992. Since 1993, he said, he has ceased receiving funding from the Chinese and is granted a monthly allowance from the government and the National Assembly. He did not say how much he receives in monthly support.
The money in his France account, much of which is frozen, is the balance from a stay in France, between the late 1960s and early 1970s, he said.
Queen Norodom Monineath acts as his accountant, the King said. “Thus, there is always a total transparency,” he said.
