An American Businessman in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (DNSI)- "I guess you could call me a carpetbagger," an American we shall call Mike Seavers laughs, "wherever there's trouble, there I am."

Seavers (he asked that his real name not be used) is in business, in Cambodia, and hopeful. Like a half-dozen other newly arrived American businessmen here, he assumes that once Congress approves the Nixon administration's $255 million aid request to Cambodia, there will be a lot of money to be made.

Seavers' basic job is importing, from any place in the world. Over the last four years in Vietnam, for example, he has brought in rice from Mexico, timber from Taiwan, and evaporated milk from New Zealand.

It can be quite lucrative. A yearly contract of $2 million for the milk, for example, brought in $60,000 to his firm annually, over a four-year period.

He has been in Cambodia now for a month, arriving when it looked as if the aid would soon be appropriated. Representing a bewildering variety of firms, he is offering a wide range of items. Among them are cement, plywood, air-conditioners, industrial chemicals, cranes, bulldozers, trucks, troop-carrying vehicles, evaporated milk, 30 ton generators capable of lighting a village, and enough canned food to feed the entire Cambodian army of 100,000 men.

Seavers' operation is flexible. His Chinese and European-backed firm is based in Singapore, a shipping center for the Far East. It both acts as an agent for others, and purchases and then resells its own goods. He may sublease a contract to a local firm in Singapore to pack canned food, purchase and rebuild his own generators or act solely as an agent for an air-conditioner company. The goods may be shipped via his firm's ships, or a contracted company.

An affable and soft-spoken man, Severs explains that he has spent most of the last month making contacts within the Cambodian government. He new eats and drinks regularly with several high-ranking officials within the Department of Foreign and Economic Affairs. He is counting on these individuals to award him contracts once the aid is given the Cambodian government.

From past experience, he assumes that he will be making fairly substantial payoffs. He describes how in Indonesia once, for example, he had a meeting with a State Governor to discuss a rice contract worth several hundred thousand dollars.

"Usually," he explains, "they take you off to the side and you discuss the kickback in private. But in this case, he quite openly stated that three per cent would go to the 'Anti-communist league'-or into official pockets-and one per cent to an Indonesian Ambassador abroad."

Seavers is currently receiving a long-term multiple entry and reentry visa to Cambodia for the rather low price of $40. In return, when the Chinese private secretary of a high-ranking Cambodian official goes to Singapore shortly-to price goods which will be purchased once the aid money is approved-Seavers has arranged for him to be "taken care of" by his Chinese partners.

Although payoffs have not come up explicitly at this early stage in Seaver's Cambodian venture, he says they will later on. 'The way it will work," he explains, "is like with my air-conditioners, say, The list price represents a 46 per cent profit. I'll take a 20 per cent commission. This leaves 26 per cent to play around with." This would go both into private pockets and to lowering prices so as to undercut competitors.

Seavers faces competition from both local and foreign firms.

Comin Khmere, a Danish-directed firm with assets of $50 million, has long had a monopoly on many of the goods coming into Cambodia. Severs hopes to work around them, however, with the help of the American Embassy. He says that as a virtual monopoly they have been charging exorbitant prices for years, and that he will be able to undercut them. "I can sell the same can of milk for which they've been getting 18 riels for 6 riels," he explains.

An American competitor proffering much the same line of goods as Severs poses another challenge. "Right now it's sort of funny," Severs says complacently, "we're both avoiding one another like a plague. He's concentrating on the Americans and I'm focussing on the Cambodians. We'll see who's right." It shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, "Maybe one of us will shut the other out. Or maybe somewhere on down the line we'll start collaborating on different items. If the price is right, why not?"

Seavers emphasizes that he is not in this only for the money. He proudly tells, for example, of how he discovered that certain firms from which the United States was buying goods for Vietnam were receiving their raw material from Red China. He exposed this to the Senate, and managed to get these firms blacklisted. He profited handsomely from this as he was at that time importing from Taiwan and South Korea.

A former U.S. advisor to anti-communist guerrilla forces in various countries in Asia, and a mercenary with Anti-Sukarno forces in the Celebes during the fifties, Seavers stresses that, "I have been fighting Communism in my own way for the last 23 years." He has not been back in America for the last 13 years.

He is not particularly worried that Congress will not pass the aid request to Cambodia. He says that the current visit of two Fulbright aides is mere "window-dressing" to show that Fulbright is concerned. "But even if Congress doesn't agree to the authorization," he adds, "the government will get the stuff in somehow. Either through the South Vietnamese or Thais or by dumping surplus Pentagon goods."

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