1996. Involvement in the 1997 coup Rather than chose a side, Teng Bunma was notorious for supporting a plurality of political actors in Cambodia from party officials to royalist party rebels, while others accused him of suppressing the voices critical of the Cambodian People's Party; in 1994, he gave the government an interest-free loan to help make up a budget shortfall. He also donated a bullet-proof Mercedes limousine to Hun Sen, and a $1.8 million aircraft to Norodom Ranariddh, the joint prime minister between 1993 and 1997. It has also been alleged that Teng Bunma was also a financier of a band of politicians who launched a failed coup against Hun Sen in 1994, and was thought to have been close to Hun Sen’s rivals within the Cambodian People's Party, Interior Minister Sar Kheng and National Assembly-chair Chea Sim. Teng Bunma, then Cambodia's wealthiest businessman, traveled to Beijing on a special mission shortly before the coup of the 1997 coup d'état led by Hun Sen. Teng Bunma later boasted during a press conference of funding Hun Sen’s coup in 1997, providing also material help by lending his own fleet of helicopters to transfer troops to Western Cambodia. Hun Sen acknowledged that without the financial support of Teng Bunma, his coup would have failed. In October 1997, Teng Bunma received a timber concession of one million acres from the Cambodian government. Facing international warrants: Medellin on the Mekong (1997-2000) In June 1998, Thailand issued an arrest warrant against Teng Bunma on fraud charges. Police determinations took place also in Hong Kong in 1999: there Bunma had submitted a falsified passport for the registration of its enterprise "to Thai Boon Roong". A 1996 article ("Medellin on the Mekong") in the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, by United States journalist Nate Thayer, described Teng Bunma as a significant figure in Cambodia's international drug-smuggling trade. In 1996, he was named in the United States campaign finance controversy during which the Chinese allegedly attempted to influence domestic American politics prior to and during the Clinton administration. Though he was blocked from entering the United States, Teng Bunma received a US visa in 1998. In 1999, King Norodom Sihanouk publicly refused a luxury car that Teng Bunma had offered him, on the grounds that he was being investigated by the United States of America. However, Hun Sen himself intervened to award diplomatic immunity to Teng