Are you an expat in Cambodia who needs to apply for a criminal record?  You landed on the right blog.  Steps are simple and easy.  Let’s get right to it.

It has been thirteen years since I started making my own living in Cambodia, and I would say the country has been experiencing a lot of great changes.  Employment, housing and accommodations, education, hotels and tourism, entertainment, government services, careers, real estate, insurance companies, health care, physical infrastructures, law firms, and the general physical condition of the country has faced drastic and overwhelming progress.  Seeing and experiencing the changes and growth of the country is something I consider a privilege.  One of the changes that many expats in Cambodia are facing now is taking a criminal record from Ministry of Justice for work purposes.  

This blog will guide you on how to obtain a criminal record from the Ministry of justice here in Cambodia.  Check it out! 

Things you need to prepare:

• original passport on hand
• photo copy of your visa and passport
• 5pieces 4×6 passport photos
• notarized house rental agreement
• forms from Ministry of Justice
• residence certificate form from Sangkat office
• money for fee ( $62.50 atleast)

Step 1:

Get your house contract ready.  Your house rental contract needs to be officially stamped or I will call it notarized by the “Sangkat” (local city hall).  If not, ask your landlord to do it for you.

Step 2:

Once you got your notarized house rental contract ready, go to your “sangkat” office and present that document to the “sangkat” officer.  You can check your area’s sangkat office by clicking the link above.  Ask any officer from the sangkat that you need a residence certificate needed for a criminal record check. 

Step 3:

The officer then will have to give you a document to be filled in.  Fill in the form, thumbprint stamped it, and submit to the officer together with your 4×6 photo, visa and passport copy.  The officer then will have to issue you your official residence certificate. Sangkat office transaction should be done right after here.  

Step 4:

With your residence certificate from your local “sangkat” office, proceed to the Ministry of Justice located across Chaktomuk Conference Hall along the riverside.   Upon arriving at the gate be courteous to the security guard, pause for a while as they will have to give you an entry little sticker and they will have to check your temperature.  

Step 5:

Ministry of Justice

Upon arrival at the counter, take a form from the staff and fill it in.  In our case we already got a form from our HR which made everything smoother.  You will have to fill in both English and Khmer versions of the form.  Once all your forms are ready, queue in and pay $62.50 for the criminal record you are requesting for.  The officer will also ask you if you want the Khmer and English Version of your criminal record, but we opted to just get the Khmer version.  Ofcourse having an English version will require more fee. 

Step 6:

Get an official receipt and the process will take 20 days before you can get your criminal record.  You can request it to be done in 12 days, but we forgot to ask the fee.  We have enough time to wait for it anyway.

The process is easy and smooth for as long as you get everything ready.  We had a little issue with our landlord, as they cannot produce us a notarized house rental agreement.  In our case, our landlord took 20 days to produce those documents, and she was also the one who got our official residence certificate from our “sangkat”.  We tried going to the “sangkat” office ourselves twice and we failed.  I know many would say that we can give anything under the table in dealing this kind of transaction, but that was not our case.  Whatever that was that transcribed between our landlord and the “sangkat” officers, we do not have any clue.  At the end, we got our criminal records requested, and what a relief that was!

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We made it easy for our readers and followers to help themselves in obtaining criminal record in Cambodia by coming up with an E-book.  This time you don’t need to contact us.  You can simply click this link to purchase the Ebook you need.