Vietnamese police have widened their investigation into alleged graft and mismanagement connected to the state-owned oil and gas giant Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) that caused US$69 million in losses.
Three PetroVietnam subsidiaries are being investigated for alleged abuse of power in appropriating US$5.3 million, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security said in a statement late on Wednesday.
The case centers on Ocean Bank, which was taken over by State Bank in 2015 at no cost after reporting losses of US$445 million. PetroVietnam had owned 20 percent of the bank and lost all its investment after the takeover.
Former Ocean Bank chairman Ha Van Tham and former general director Nguyen Xuan Son face embezzlement charges. They are among 51 bankers and businessmen including 46 senior executives at Ocean Bank who are standing trial in Hanoi for alleged mismanagement.
The bank gave US$69 million in interest exceeding the rate set by the central bank to more than 50,000 individuals, and nearly 400 companies and institutions including three subsidiaries of PetroVietnam, according to the accusations.
Tham and Son are accused of initiating the policy, and the other defendants are accused of implementing it.
The police statement said that US$3.4 million of the excessive interest was given to PetroVietnam Exploration and Production Corp, US$852,000 was given to Binh Son Oil Refinery company and US$1 million was given to VietsovPetro, a joint venture between PetroVietnam and Russia.
Ocean Bank executives told the court they had to offer customers higher interest rates to attract savings and that the bank would collapse if they had not done so.
They also told the court they had given senior executives of the three PetroVietnam subsidiaries tens of thousands of US dollars for their support. The senior executives denied the allegations.
Over the past two weeks, police have arrested or put under house arrest four other former or current senior executives of PetroVietnam and a former deputy State Bank governor who oversaw bad debts at credit institutions for their roles in the case.
In May, Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party fired Dinh La Thang as the party boss in Ho Chi Minh City after finding he made “serious mistakes and violations” while heading PetroVietnam.
Thang, who had earlier been removed from the Politburo, headed PetroVietnam from 2005 to 2011.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
RSS