A government lawyer has written to the Phnom Penh municipal court to again ask it to allow land belonging to fugitive former Cambodian ambassador to Brunei Nan Sy to be sold at auction.

Ky Tech, a lawyer for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, said money recouped from the sale of the property must be used to pay back the US$432,000 Nan Sy, 48, stole from the ministry while working as a diplomat in 2008.

“To return these amounts of lost money to the ministry as well as to pay for other damages, I ask the court to take action and sell the land as soon as possible,” Ky Tech said.

Nan Sy, a former Funcinpec legislator, was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced in absentia to four years’ jail last November for stealing money meant to have been used to build a Cambodian embassy in Brunei.

He was also fined eight million riel ($2,000).

Before Nan Sy was convicted, the court ruled that his two plots of land must be protected from sale or transfer.

Nan Sy owned land in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kork district and in Kampong Chhnang province, Ky Tech said.

At the conclusion of a civil case against him on February 2, Nan Sy, a Khmer Muslim, was ordered to return $432,876.65 to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation and pay about $36,000 in damages.  

Police announced last month that they had tracked Nan Sy to an undisclosed location and Interpol had been preparing to arrest him.