They Smashed Banks for Pol Pot. Now They’re Founding Them.
By JULIA WALLACEMARCH 22, 2017
MALAI, Cambodia — For years, Tep Khunnal was the devoted personal secretary of Pol Pot, staying loyal to the
charismatic ultracommunist leader even as the Khmer Rouge movement collapsed around them in the late 1990s.
Mr. Dim Sok, 65, was a nearly illiterate farmer when he became a revolutionary in 1970,
fighting in the jungles with the Khmer Rouge for five years before they seized power.
"Frederick Taylor in the early 20th century, he talked about efficiency, but Drucker talked about effectiveness." During a recent lecture, Mr. Tep Khunnal exhorted his students to remember
that good management was just as important as good ideas.
The residents of this dusty but bustling town are almost all former Khmer Rouge soldiers or cadres and their families,
but they have come to embrace capitalism with almost as much vigor as they once fought to destroy class distinctions, free trade and even money itself.
Malai was still a malaria-infested jungle stronghold when Mr. Tep Khunnal moved here in 1998,
bringing with him Pol Pot’s widow, whom he married shortly after his boss’s death.
The area broke away from the Khmer Rouge in 1996, in part to avoid Pol Pot’s attempts to recollectivize property,
and soon after a few thousand ex-communists raised capital to build the market by issuing shares in a joint-stock company.
