Cambodian mobile operator Beeline has made an official announcement of the replacement of its general director, who the Post confirmed left the job on May 4, according to a company statement from the brand’s owner, Vimpelcom.

Siddhanta Kothari, former chief financial officer at GTEL Mobile, Vimpelcom’s Vietnam company until last month, when it sold off its 49 per cent stake, took the general director’s position two weeks ago, according to a Beeline Cambodia spokesperson.

Gael Campan, the company’s general manager until May 4, told the Post last week he had left the company.

He declined to discuss his departure or the future of Vimpelcom in Cambodia.

Vimpelcom’s Amsterdam-based spokesman, Bobby Leach, said in an email on Friday that Campan had left Beeline to “pursue new challenges elsewhere”.

Leach also declined to comment on potential mergers or acquisitions of the company, after Vimpelcom sold its Vietnam assets and took a US$527 million impairment charge on its Cambodian and Vietnamese operations in March.

Analysts told the Post last month Beeline’s exit from Cambodia was “imminent”.

A Russian newspaper reported that the company, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, was considering a sell-off of its Cambodian business.

In Beeline’s statement, however, Kothari was quoted as saying the company was looking to develop new services in Cambodia.

“We are surely going to launch unique and interesting products in the near future,” he said, according to the statement.

The statement also claimed Beeline Cambodia had more than one million subscribers, which would put its user numbers more than 370,000 above the 630,000 reported in November, according to data obtained by the Post earlier this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Don Weinland at [email protected]