What's Cambodian For Caveat Emptor? Ask Angelina Jolie

Simon Montlake, Forbes Staff
Forbes writer in Asia

Wall Street
28th October, 2011

Investing in postwar countries requires a certain leap of faith. War and revolution play havoc with legal titles to land and property, so figuring out who owns what is tricky. Caveat Emptor, in other words. There’s also the reputational risk of doing business with unsavoury characters. That seems to have been the case with Angelina Jolie, Hollywood actress and high-profile philanthropist. According to an investigative report in the Global Post, Jolie may have erred when she expanded her charitable operations in Cambodia. The accusation relates to the purchase of two plots of land for her Maddox Jolie Pitt Foundation, which is named after her adopted Cambodian son. The seller of the land in northwest Cambodia, a final redoubt of the notorious Khmer Rouge (KR), was Yim Tith. In 2002, Jolie paid him over $25,000 for a total of 225 acres, according to sale documents cited by Global Post. The land was then used as a base of operations for the foundation’s work in the area.

Who is Yim Tith? An alleged mass murderer. In 2009, prosecutors at the slow-moving KR tribunal in Phnom Penh indicted him for crimes against humanity. As a senior KR cadre, he oversaw purges of other party officials and “cleanings” of the general population. In short, he was in a position of authority during the 1975-79 KR regime when an estimated 1.7 million people died of famine, overwork, torture and executions. That’s why he was in a docket presented to the investigating judges at the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal. Yet the judges have effectively squelched the case, to howls of dismay from human-rights groups and victims of the genocide. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has made it clear that he wants the tribunal to wrap up its work after the latest trial of four elderly leaders. That means that Yim Tith and his fellow accused would be off the hook.

Of course, Jolie’s transaction predates the tribunal’s existence and Yim Tith was a free man at the time. He had title to the land, as did other KR cadre in the area under a peace deal in the 1990s with Hun Sen. Yet the Global Post makes the case that Jolie should have known better.

Tith’s sale of the land to Jolie is no secret among government officials in Samlot. In Saorith, a deputy governor, said in a telephone interview that Tith had sold the land to Jolie because he was short of cash.

“The Prime Minister had given the land in this area to former Democratic Kampuchea soldiers and he [Yim Tith] sold the land to her because he badly needed money,” he said by telephone. “She has title of ownership.”

“She usually provides some support to school children such as clothing and educational equipment.”

Yem Yorn, chief of Samlot’s Meanchey commune, not far from the area of Jolie’s operations, described himself as a 20-year acquaintance of Tith, and said he was also aware of the land deals with Jolie.

“He had land here but now it is sold and it is sold to Angelina Jolie,” he said in an interview at his office.

According to Sarath, while Jolie may not have known precise details about Tith’s past, he made her aware of the fact that the seller had held a senior position in the government of the communist leader Pol Pot.

“She knows that Yim Tith and everybody are the Khmer Rouge,” he said by telephone. “We talked like we have to, like Mr. Yim Tith is a big man there and he’s very important person. … So she knows that.”

via Hollyworld: Angelina Jolie’s legacy in Cambodia | GlobalPost.

Sarath is Mounh Sarath, a former partner of Jolie’s in her Cambodian charitable work. They had an acrimonious split in 2006 when he claimed that she reneged on a contract. Sarath, in turn, was accused of mismanaging the foundation’s finances. So he’s clearly got an axe to grind. Jolie’s representatives have declined comment. The timing is noteworthy, given the brewing controversy over the KR tribunal (a German judge recently resigned and accused the Cambodian government of interference). Yet the revelation, such that it is, has no bearing on the indictment against Yim Tith. What it does demonstrate is that Hollywood celebrities need to tread carefully in their overseas philanthropic work. When that path leads to the door of unsavoury ex-warlords, don’t expect the details to remain quiet.