~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

Year :      [2003]      [2002]      [2001]      [2000]      [1999]      [1998]      [1997]

Vietnam rejects leniency pleas for two former officials in biggest corruption trial

HANOI - Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong has rejected leniency pleas from two former executives sentenced to death in the communist country's biggest corruption trial, state-controlled media reported Wednesday.

Tang Minh Phung, former director of one of Vietnam's once largest private companies, and Pham Nhat Hong, former director of the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, had their pleas rejected by the president in recent decisions, the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said. Phung, Hong and four others were sentenced to death in 1999 following a highly publicized corruption trial. It is unclear whether the others requested leniency, and the president's office declined comment.

In Vietnam, it can take years for condemned prisoners to be executed by firing squad, and it was unclear when the two would be put to death. All 77 defendants in the case, including 18 bank executives, were convicted for involvement in a graft scam to appropriate state property.

Two companies established a network of 47 front companies to obtain huge bank loans with phantom collateral with help from corrupt bank executives. The money was used for land deals, but they went sour in the mid-1990s during a freeze in the local real estate market, forcing the companies to default on the loans. Those involved were arrested in March 1997.

More than $280 million is believed to have been lost in the scam, most borne by two major state-owned banks, the Ho Chi Minh city branches of Industrial and Commercial Bank of Vietnam (Incombank) and Vietcombank.

The Associated Press - May 7, 2003.