Resident aliens
Vietnamese returning from exile are now welcome. But a
massive fraud case lays bare bitter resentment
HANOI - Nguyen Gia Thieu's neighbors rarely saw him, except when they glimpsed his
silver Mercedes gliding through the gates of his three-story villa in Ho Chi
Minh City. His lifestyle—the house, the servants, the beauty-queen
wife—befitted one of Vietnam's top entrepreneurs, but it infuriated the
community. One neighbor snarls, "They are too rich to even look at ordinary
people." So there was no sympathy on Jan. 7 when police arrested Thieu, 38,
then raided his house, hauling off reams of documents and more than
$250,000 in cash. The charge: his Dong Nam Telecom Trade and Service
Co., the sole domestic distributor for Nokia and Samsung, was accused of
dodging at least $6.5 million in import and value-added taxes last year.
Authorities hailed it as Vietnam's biggest-ever tax-fraud bust—proof, they
claim, that the country is serious about tackling fraud and corruption. But
another factor has tongues wagging both in Vietnam's boardrooms and at its
noodle-soup stands. Thieu and his older brother Nguyen Trong Thang were
known not just for their wealth—their private company boasted estimated
revenue of $60 million in 2002—but for who they are. Born in Vietnam but
raised in France, the brothers are Viet Kieu, as people who fled the country
following the fall of Saigon in 1975 are known. Once reviled as traitors, Viet
Kieu are now seen as resources, even patriots, for their access to foreign
capital and Western business and technical expertise. The Hanoi government
courts them with preferential tax rates, relaxed visa requirements, even
low-interest loans. "It's the best of both worlds," says David Thai, 30, who
returned in 1995 and now runs Viet Thai International, a coffee business in Ho
Chi Minh City. "In business terms, it's pretty much a license to kill."
Since 1987, when the government first opened
its doors to them, more than 150,000 Viet
Kieu have returned to work for multinational
corporations, nongovernmental organizations
or themselves. There are more than 700 Viet
Kieu-owned enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City
alone. Phil Tran's animation company, Glass
Egg Digital Media, is one of them. But, says
the 39-year-old whose family departed Saigon
when he was 12, "There's always been tension
between those who stayed and those who
left." Many Vietnamese see returnees as
carpetbaggers who escaped the lean 1980s
and now flaunt their wealth. Viet Kieu
businessmen speak of random price hikes
from local merchants, sometimes open
hostility. Thai says some of that may be their
own fault: "Many returnees come in with the
mentality that we're better, smarter,
wealthier—and we'll tell you how to do things.
That's left a bad reputation a lot of us are still
trying to overcome."
High-profile scandals haven't helped. Last
April, returnee Huynh Quoc Quang was
sentenced to life in prison for bilking people
out of at least $10,000 with false promises of
American work visas. The following month,
police began chasing Ho Tran Lap, a Viet
Kieu businessman accused of running an illegal long-distance calling service;
he's still on the lam. And on Jan. 16, a Vietnamese-American who runs a
company in Ho Chi Minh City that makes brushes and combs was stabbed in
the forehead—the result, police suspect, of a business dispute.
"I always read about the contribution of 'patriotic Viet Kieu' in the
newspapers," complains Vu Du, a retired technician. "But look at all these
fraudsters, getting rich and cheating the government. If we're not careful, we'll
lose our country to such people." Thieu's case will only intensify the suspicions.
State media has reported that 33 companies, some of them government
owned, are being investigated due to their ties to Dong Nam Telecom.
For now, no trial date has been set for Thieu. As for his brother, he's been
questioned and released without being charged. Thieu's family insists that both
are innocent. Meanwhile, some sympathizers wonder if Dong Nam is being
targeted not because it was unusually corrupt but because its owners lost the
support of patrons within the government who had previously looked away.
After all, tax evasion is so pervasive in Vietnam, says Thai, that he's been
called a "sucker" for bothering to pay them. In Thieu's neighborhood, people
don't much care whether he's guilty or not. As one gleeful local puts it:
"Everyone hopes police will seize all their property." So much for loving thy
neighbor.
By Kay Johnson - Time Asia magazine - January 27, 2003.
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