A judge has ordered the former deputy of the royalist Funcinpec party to pay Prime Minister Hun Sen some $125,000 in damages for claiming that Funcinpec officials had been paid by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party to assume the vacated seats of the opposition.
Y Rin, a court spokesman, said on Thursday that the court had also ordered Lu Laysreng to pay the state about $2,000 for “insulting the monarchy and the premier”.
The case against Laysreng was filed in October by Ky Tech, a lawyer for Hun Sen who was recently appointed to the CPP’s Central Committee.
A leaked recording, purportedly of Laysreng making the comments, was posted to the pro-government Facebook page “Sei Ha”. The page has posted numerous secret recordings in recent years, but has yet to be investigated for possible breaches of the law, despite it being illegal in Cambodia to record or publish private conversations unless authorized by law enforcement.
