DPA
Phnom Penh - Officials from Cambodia's fledgling Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) have arrested a senior provincial prosecutor on unspecified charges, national media reported Tuesday.
It marks the first known arrest of a public official by the ACU, which was launched earlier this year to tackle pervasive corruption in public life.
The Cambodia Daily newspaper said Top Chan Sereyvuth, the senior prosecutor in Pursat province, was arrested early Monday.
ACU head Om Yentieng, who led the operation, refused to disclose the grounds on which the prosecutor was being held.
Top Chan Sereyvuth was last year named in media reports as being involved in a long-running land dispute case that was mysteriously moved to his court in Pursat from another province where he had previously worked as a judge.
The head of an organization that was contesting the land told media at the time that Top Chan Sereyvuth was to receive 2 hectares of land once the case was resolved.
Global graft monitor Transparency International ranks Cambodia among the world's most corrupt nations.
It took the government 15 years to promulgate an anti-corruption law, whose eventual passage followed years of pleading from donors who annually give hundreds of millions of dollars.
One recent survey found that Cambodians regard the judiciary as the most corrupt institution in the country.
