WALL STREET JOURNAL
22-1-18

 

Communist Purge Plays Out in Vietnam’s Trial of the Decade

A Hanoi court on Monday sentenced a former official to life in prison, calling it ‘a necessary warning against the abuse of power’

 

By James Hookway

 

The disappearance of a former Vietnamese official in Berlin last summer gave the outside world an early glimpse into an anticorruption drive captivating communist-run Vietnam.

Germany said Vietnamese agents kidnapped Trinh Xuan Thanh, who had been seeking asylum there. But Vietnam said the former executive at state-owned oil-and-gas giant PetroVietnam returned home of his own accord to face corruption charges stemming from losses of $150 million.

On Monday, a Hanoi court sentenced him to life in prison. He was convicted alongside other defendants, including a former Politburo member who had once been groomed as a potential senior leader and who was himself ordered to serve 13 years. Other officials and executives were handed sentences ranging from a 13-month suspended sentence to 22 years in prison.

In its ruling, the court said the severe sentences were “a necessary warning against the abuse of power.”

The spectacle of Mr. Thanh being led into court over the past few weeks, disheveled and handcuffed along with the former Ho Chi Minh City party boss Dinh La Thang, garnered a flurry of attention in Vietnam.

On one level it is Vietnam’s largest anticorruption trial in years, and an indication of the Communist Party’s efforts to rid itself of a problem that could undermine its authority in one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies.

Besides Messrs. Thanh and Thang—the latter was a former chairman of PetroVietnam before becoming transport minister and then party chief in Vietnam’s largest city—20 other defendants are on trial for alleged corruption offenses.

The investigations and trials appear set to widen. In a concurrent mass trial in Hanoi, another 46 defendants, mostly officials and bankers, are accused of defrauding a bank.

A separate September embezzlement case against 51 other officials and bankers resulted in one executive being sentenced to death for corruption, while several others were given lengthy prison sentences.

Berlin-based Transparency International’s annual corruption ranking places Vietnam at 113 out of 176 countries surveyed, behind neighbors including Thailand and the Philippines.

Efforts at tackling corruption tend to find support among ordinary Vietnamese, who say they’re tired of having to pay bribes to secure places in schools for their children. Traffic police regularly take motorcyclists aside in an attempt to extract payments.

On another level, the crackdown reflects an internal power struggle shaping the ruling Communist Party, much as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption purges in China marginalized some of his potential rivals. Some analysts say that as such, the purge may do little to address the broader corruption problem afflicting the country.

Vietnam’s top leader, 73-year-old Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong launched the crackdown in early 2016 after outmaneuvering his chief rival, former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, for the senior post. An orthodox Marxist, Mr. Trong and his supporters took umbrage with some of the loose management and corruption that thrived under Mr. Dung’s 10-year tenure as premier.

“Mr. Dung either tolerated or turned a blind eye to the network of corrupt officials that grew each year he was in power,” said Carlyle Thayer, an expert on Vietnam and emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.

After Mr. Dung left the Politburo, with his term as prime minister over and no other post to grab onto, investigators began probing many of his closest business associates and political allies, including Mr. Thang, the former Ho Chi Minh City party chief.

Mr. Dung couldn’t be reached for comment.

The investigations appear unlikely to affect Vietnam’s relationships with China or the U.S.

Hanoi has a prickly relationship with Beijing, and the two countries both claim parts of the South China Sea. To counter China’s growing influence, Vietnam in recent years has warmed to the U.S., which now regularly sends naval vessels to its ports and is Vietnam’s largest export market.

Mr. Thang, 57, was widely viewed as one of the former prime minister’s protégés. After serving as chairman of PetroVietnam, he was tapped by Mr. Dung to head Vietnam’s transport ministry. Later, he was promoted to the Politburo and assigned to lead the Communist Party in Ho Chi Minh City, a role that could have been a stepping stone to higher office.

Foreign media aren’t allowed access to the trials. State media reported Mr. Thang as telling the court last week: “I trust the party leadership and the fair and objective judgment of the court.”

Mr. Thang last week denied the corruption allegation against him. He is accused of knowingly channeling state contracts to PetroVietnam’s financially-troubled construction unit, from which funds were later embezzled.

His lawyers had asked the court to change the charge to negligence, saying there was insufficient evidence. Some officials who are on trial have said they were following instructions from Mr. Thang.

Lawyers for Mr. Thanh, the defendant who had been in Berlin seeking asylum, have said there was insufficient evidence to convict him. But the court ruled Monday that he had embezzled funds over a 14-year period. He also faces a separate embezzlement trial later this week, which carries a potential death penalty.

In an editorial published in state newspapers this month, Truong Tan Sang, a former president and another of Mr. Dung’s critics, said the party’s battle against what he called its “internal enemies” must continue.