Cambodia launches crackdown on passports after reports Yingluck Shinawatra used foreign document to flee Thailand

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided to annul diplomatic passports issued to anyone born outside the country, ordering such passports be issued in only the “most necessary” cases.

In a two-page instruction, issued last Wednesday, the prime minister also ordered all government bodies to retrieve such passports for a thorough check, the Phnom Penh Post reported on Monday. The instruction was issued the same day the South China Morning Post reported Thailand’s former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, in self-imposed exile since 2017, has a Cambodian passport.

Corporate filings in Hong Kong showed Yingluck used a Cambodian passport to register as the sole director of a Hong Kong company that was incorporated in August last year. It remains unclear when Yingluck obtained the passport, and whether it was a diplomatic or civilian passport.

Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, also a former prime minister of Thailand in self-imposed exile, used to be an adviser to the Cambodian government. The corporate filings have added weight to the theory Yingluck fled her country in 2017 via Cambodia, ahead of a court ruling that sentenced her to five years in prison for mishandling rice subsidies, charges she rejected as political persecution.

In Cambodia, foreigners appointed as advisers and assistants to high-ranking officials and institutions, who have become naturalised Cambodians, can apply for diplomatic passports, the Phnom Penh Post reported on Monday.

Hun’s instruction stated that, to prevent such diplomatic passports from being used incorrectly, they must not be issued to those born outside Cambodia unless in the “most necessary” cases.