This is a headline from February 21, 2020 in which the newspaper reports that there are no ghost workers, i.e., people on the government payroll who don’t actually do any work.
This is a headline from February 24, 2020 in which the ghost workers are admitted. Given that the prime minister’s “official” salary is $4,000 per month (Ha!), recovering $1.7 million seems to indicate there were a LOT of ghost workers.
The country of Cambodia is good, the people are wonderful, but the government is corrupt and incompetent.