Former PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corp (PVC) chairman Trinh Xuan Thanh was yesterday sentenced to life in prison and a former high-ranking Vietnamese government official received a lengthy prison term at the end of a major corruption trial.
The 22 defendants in the case were mostly current or former executives at PetroVietnam and were convicted of mismanagement, embezzlement or both during their tenures at the state energy giant.
Former PetroVietnam chairman Dinh La Thang, the first politburo member to be jailed in decades, was sentenced to 13 years in jail by the Hanoi People’s Court. He was accused of deliberate economic mismanagement that cost the state millions.
Photo: AFP
Trinh was given life imprisonment for embezzlement and also convicted of economic mismanagement.
Germany has accused Vietnamese agents of snatching him from a Berlin park last year, a charge Vietnam has denied, saying Thanh turned himself in to police voluntarily.
The incident strained relations between the two countries.
Three other former chairmen of PetroVietnam were sentenced to nine years in jail for economic mismanagement. Punishments for the other defendants ranged from 22 years in prison to suspended sentences.
The Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted a judge as saying that the prosecutions were “well-founded.”
The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) under the watch of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong is waging an unprecedented crackdown on corruption in Vietnam, with PetroVietnam and the country’s banking sector at the center.
Foreign press were not allowed to attend the two-week trial, although more than 100 Vietnamese had gathered outside the courthouse as the sentences were announced.
Thang was convicted of “deliberately violating state economic management regulations, causing serious consequences” by choosing PVC to build a thermal power plant without a proper bidding and appraisal process.
Thang was accused of ordering an advance payment of US$67 million to PVC, which did not use the funds for the proper purpose, causing losses of US$5.5 million to the state.
Retired government official Hoang Dinh Thanh, speaking outside the court, said the sentences were tough enough.
“I think the sentences handed down were fair. It is necessary for the country to fight against corruption,” Hoang, 70, said.
Some in the crowd waved as the convicted were driven by in prison vehicles. Some expressed sympathy for Thang for his good deeds for the country.
“I understand those who committed wrongdoings must be punished,” said Hoang Thi Ha, a 42-year-old shop owner. “But Mr Thang has done many good things for the country. I’d hoped he would have got leniency for that merit. His jail sentence is a bit harsh.”
Jonathan London, a lecturer at the Leiden University in the Netherlands and a Vietnam expert, said that further reforms and commitments by the communist authorities are needed to root out corruption.
However, while the jail sentences might be dramatic, history in other countries suggests in the longer term that corruption is not best fought by punishment “but precisely the kinds of institutional reforms and levels of commitment to transparency that he Vietnamese public opinion has been calling for, but which Vietnamese leaders have been unfortunately unwilling to embrace,” London said.
Dinh is accused of economic mismanagement in another case for his role in PetroVietnam buying shares worth US$36 million in Ocean Commercial Joint Stock Bank. PetroVietnam lost all its investment when the State Bank of Vietnam bought the bank for nothing. He is expected to stand trial in the coming months.
Dinh was a rising political star, but was in May dismissed from the all-powerful Vietnamese politburo and was subsequently fired as Communist Party secretary of the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City. He was arrested on Dec. 8.
In the meantime, Dinh is scheduled to be put on trial on Wednesday on charges of embezzling US$622,000 from a property development project.
Another trial involving 46 defendants, including many former bankers, is currently taking place in Ho Chi Minh City.
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