I'm not a lawyer.
My view is that you should be able to pay to solve civil issues (my dog pooped on your lawn, etc).
But criminal issues are not open to market forces -particularly such an unequal market as Cambodia.
That part irks me the most. He's driving drunk, injured 3 people. After running away paid some compensation, which in Cambodia is likely to be small change. No further action required as far as police are concerned.
It's disgusting. Compensation should be part of criminal proceedings rather than void them
It's a sad state of affairs. Cambodians are wonderful people, but the corruption and inequality is all pervasive.
But the issue is that, even if this compensation is judged fair (and there's not a whole lot of incentive for the perp to be fair...), without the criminal charge there's effectively no deterrent against this happening again.
Incidentally, in Finland most fines (including speeding fines) are computed as units of income. So a millionaire is still incentivized not to speed, because they might get hit with a $100k fine: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm
How precisely does Finland avoid the loop holes, if they do?