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Vietnamese arrested over bird-flu fakery

Four village officials in northern Vietnam were arrested for allegedly inflating the number of poultry they culled while trying to stop the spread of bird flu -- a scheme that would have bilked the government of US$206,000, an official said yesterday.

The officials in charge of the local bird culling effort in Dai Dong commune near Hanoi, including commune chief Vuong Tien Dung, were taken into police custody on Friday, said Tran Tien Ngot, head of the commune Communist Party organization.

They were accused of "abuse of power and authority while doing official duty," he said. The offense carries a jail sentence up to 10 years.

Vietnam has been hardest hit by bird flu, with more than 40 human deaths.

Ngot said the officials allegedly collaborated with poultry farmers to inflate hundreds of thousands of poultry said to have been culled last month.

The Vietnamese government compensates 5,000 dong (US$0.31) to 15,000 dong for each bird culled in an effort to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Ngot said the government would have lost an estimated 3.3 billion dong (US$206,000), but the compensation hadn't been paid yet.
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