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FINANCIAL TIMES
Vietnam seeks to purge ‘corrupt’ Communist leaders
Ex-politburo member Dinh La Thang among 22 officials on trial for
economic crimes
John
Reed
Vietnam will on Monday begin the trial of 22 former top officials
including Dinh La Thang, a former member of its ruling Communist party’s
politburo, as part of a sweeping and politically charged crackdown on
alleged corruption in energy and banking.
Mr Dinh, who is 57, will appear in court on Monday on charges of
economic mismanagement in connection with his former role as chairman of
PetroVietnam, the country’s largest state-owned company by revenue.
The former ruling party official was arrested on December 8 after
Vietnam’s national assembly stripped him of his lawmaker status and
immunity from prosecution, and he will be the highest-ranking state
official to face criminal charges in decades. Formerly a rising
political star, Mr Dinh was also sacked as the top Communist party
leader in Ho Chi Minh City.
His brother Dinh Manh Thang was arrested the following day.Vietnamese
officials are investigating alleged fraud involving PetroVietnam and
Ocean Bank, a major private bank in which the oil and gas group bought a
stake during an acquisition spree by state-owned Vietnamese groups. The
stake was later written off in 2015 when the central bank took over the
bank to prevent its collapse.
According to Vietnamese state-controlled media, Mr Dinh is accused of
investing 800bn Vietnamese dong ($35m) of PetroVietnam’s money in Ocean
Bank without having appraised the deal properly and will face charges of
“deliberate violation of state regulations on economic management,
causing serious consequences”. The charges could bring the former
official up to 20 years in jail.
Among the other officials standing trial is Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former
head of PetroVietnam’s construction arm. Germany accuses Vietnam of
abducting him and spiriting him out of the country in a case that caused
a diplomatic furore.
Mr Trinh, who had been seeking asylum in Germany, turned himself into
police in Hanoi last August after an international manhunt. He said he
had returned to Vietnam voluntarily, but eyewitnesses reported seeing
him being bundled into a car in Berlin’s Tiergarten park, and Germany’s
government said that he was kidnapped with the involvement of Vietnam’s
embassy in Berlin. Germany expelled Vietnam’s intelligence agency
station chief in Berlin in response.
Neither Mr Dinh nor the other officials facing trial could be
immediately reached by the Financial Times for comment.
Vietnam’s Communist leadership, under general secretary Nguyen Phu
Trong, has been cracking down on the corruption that has allowed some
officials to amass large-scale personal wealth and fomented resentment
among many ordinary Vietnamese. PetroVietnam has been the main target of
their anti-graft efforts. Nguyen Xuan Son, a former Ocean Bank chief
executive and ex-chairman of PetroVietnam, was sentenced to death in
September after being found guilty of corruption.
Observers in Vietnam have linked the anti-graft crackdown to a struggle
for power and legitimacy in the Communist-ruled nation, but some said
that the crackdown could rattle companies doing business there.“This
will worry investors,” said Nguyen Phuong Linh, a Singapore-based
analyst with Control Risks, the consultancy. “Vietnam used to be the
most politically stable country in south-east Asia, but this could
create a higher perception of risk.” |