Teng Bunma (; 1941 – 17 June 2016), also written as Teng Boonma, Theng Boonma, and Theng Bunma, was one of the wealthiest businessmen in Cambodia. He was one the founders of Thai Boon Roong Group and, along with Sok Kong and Meng Retthy, he was well known as one of the “four tigers” of the Cambodian economy after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, between the 1980s-2000s. Biography Origin Teng Bunma was of Chinese Cambodian descent. Bringing Cambodia back to democracy and back to business (1990-1997) Teng Bunma was one of the first Cambodian businesspeople to invest significantly in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Having spent much of his life in Thailand, like many of Cambodia’s early tycoons he began cutting informal deals with the country’s government in the 1980s, before the economy had officially opened. In the early 1990s, Teng Bunma bankrolled key battles in the continued war against the Khmer Rouge. However, Sam Rainsy began accusing Teng Bunma of gold smuggling and customs fraud, and placed him at the center of a wide circle of drug traffickers. In October 1994, this led to a showdown between the two over a Phnom Penh market development that had dispossessed local vendors. Thereafter, Sam Rainsy was dumped from the Cabinet, kicked out of the Funcinpec, and stripped from his seat in Parliament in June 1995. Teng Bunma is a key example of how the emergence of free market policies in the late 1980s and the rapid privatization of common resources and state assets, legalised the businesses of former traffickers and helped them set up companies which dominate the Cambodian private sector today. In order to bring an end to the ongoing civil war, he bankrolled any groups that were ready to fight against the last Khmer rouge warriors and in return he was awarded state contracts and licences to monopolise particular types of imports. Thus, with his Cambodian business partner Sok Kong, chairman of Sokimex, he helped to fund the recapture of Pailin from the Khmer Rouge in 1994, where he later opened his own casino. In late 1995, Teng Bunma was elected as the first president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce. Teng Bunma invested heavily in the private sector, especially in real estate, but also supported the development of public infrastructure, such as the construction of “Hun Sen Park” in Phnom Penh in