18 Facts About Teng Bunma

Teng Bunma was one of the first Cambodian businesspeople to invest significantly in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.

Teng Bunma is a key example of how the emergence of free market policies in the late 1980s and the rapid privatization of common resources and state assets, legalised the businesses of former traffickers and helped them set up companies which dominate the Cambodian private sector today.

In late 1995, Teng Bunma was elected as the first president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce.

Rather than chose a side, Teng Bunma was notorious for supporting a plurality of political actors in Cambodia from party officials to royalist party rebels, while others accused him of suppressing the voices critical of the Cambodian People's Party; in 1994, he gave the government an interest-free loan to help make up a budget shortfall.

Teng Bunma donated a bullet-proof Mercedes limousine to Hun Sen, and a $1.8 million aircraft to Norodom Ranariddh, the joint prime minister between 1993 and 1997.

Teng Bunma later boasted during a press conference of funding Hun Sen's coup in 1997, providing material help by lending his own fleet of helicopters to transfer troops to Western Cambodia.

In October 1997, Teng Bunma received a timber concession of one million acres from the Cambodian government.

Police determinations took place in Hong Kong in 1999: there Bunma had submitted a falsified passport for the registration of its enterprise "to Thai Boon Roong".

In 1999, King Norodom Sihanouk publicly refused a luxury car that Teng Bunma had offered him, on the grounds that he was being investigated by the United States of America.

However, Hun Sen himself intervened to award diplomatic immunity to Teng Bunma for falsifying immigration documents, which was considered abusing ambassadorial powers to evade the law by some human rights group.

Teng Bunma took an important role of leadership in the business community to the point of becoming a "kingmaker".

In 2000, Guo Dongpo, who was the director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office office in Beijing, met Teng Bunma to ask for his assistance in controlling unruly mainland gang activity in the Cambodia, as the latter had become "legendary" among the Chinese Khmer community.

Teng Bunma passed away at the age of 75 on June 17,2016 at 12.45pm in a hospital in Phnom Penh by natural causes, leaving the 133 story Thai Boon Roong Twin Tower World Trade Center in Phnom Penh, located next to Nagaworld, unfinished.

Teng Bunma left being him one of the largest real estate empires in Cambodia.

Teng Bunma owned the luxury Intercontinental hotel in Phnom Penh and Rasmei Kampuchea, the country's most influential newspaper.

Teng Bunma was elected as the first president of Cambodia's Chamber of Commerce in 1995, a useful position for networking in a country where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small group of closely connected politicians, military officials and businessmen.

Teng Bunma has been described as a "trigger-happy tycoon" following incidents where he used or brandished hand guns.

Teng Bunma received an honorary degree from Iowa Wesleyan University at the request of his business partner, Ted Sioeng.