Last September, the Cambodia Daily - another critic of the regime - was shut down after it was hit with an $8.2 million tax bill.

Also last year, the Cambodia National Rescue Party was dissolved and 118 of its members were banned from politics for five years. Opposition leader Kem Sokha was charged with treason and jailed.

Cambodians are due to vote in national elections on July 29 and the United Nations has warned democracy is failing in the country.

Announcing the sale,  Clough said Sivakumar was an experienced newspaper man and that he hoped the sale would finally dispel "rumours flying in all directions" about the paper's survival.

Coincidentally, Clough said the Post's now-former owners had also settled their tax dispute with Cambodia's tax department.

"I have never felt that our Company was ever under threat, and the Minister [for Information, H.E. Khieu Kanharith] has always been the first to defend [sic]. He has always acknowledged that Phnom Penh Post is independent and has nothing to fear if it obeys the rules,"  Clough said.

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In a separate statement, Sivakumar also claimed to be fully committed to the newspaper's editorial independence.  The sale price was not disclosed.

But Robertson said the ownership group "doesn’t appear to have any real interest in the media. And we have seen Malaysian investors used in the past to come into Cambodia to change ownership of various companies".

"It's very interesting the tax issues the Post was facing are all of a sudden resolved and that the former owner of the Post was singing the praises of the Minister of Information, who has not been a friend of independent media in Cambodia."

"This could be a move towards altering the Phnom Penh Post and making it much more of a daily that doesn’t rock the boat."

The Post's former editor-in-chief Chad Williams said the government may have coerced the sale.

"From the outside looking in, the most troubling thing is the timing of the tax bill's settlement and the Post's subsequent sale. The odds of them not being connected seem incredibly remote,"  Williams said.

"That's troubling because it suggests the Cambodian government may have used the threat of a shutdown to essentially coerce the sale.