More heads roll in Vietnam corruption scandal
HANOI - Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has sacked two top police and government officials in an anti-corruption drive that follows a major graft scandal this year.
Dung fired Major General Cao Ngoc Oanh, head of investigative police in the Public Security Ministry, months after Oanh had met middlemen offering bribes to protect Transport Ministry cadres who had embezzled millions of dollars.
The premier also allowed Nguyen Van Lam, deputy head of the Government Office, to resign, after Lam "admitted shortcomings" in a separate case, taking cash gifts from central Vietnam officials three years ago, reports said.
Both cadres sacked on Thursday had been emeshed in a major scandal in the Transport Ministry's Project Management Unit 18 (PMU 18) that has rocked the communist regime this year and fuelled public anger at official graft.
Then-PMU 18 chief Bui Tien Dung and others were arrested in January after it emerged they had fleeced millions, much of it from the
World Bank and foreign donors, for luxury goods and to bet on English and Spanish league football.
What started as a story about illegal football betting opened a can of worms that embarrassed the regime, which in April sacked transport minister Dao Dinh Binh and arrested his deputy, Nguyen Viet Tien, a former PMU 18 chief.
Police General Oanh was in charge of investigating the affair when he attended a lunch at a Hanoi luxury hotel days before the PMU 18 chief's arrest, meeting a middleman who asked him to clear Dung's name.
The other top cadre sacked on Thursday, Lam, was also at the Hanoi lunch, along with his boss, Government Office head Doan Manh Giao, who remains in his ministerial-level post.
Lam was already in trouble over a separate affair, which was the topic of heated debate in a recent National Assembly session last month, and which was the official reason given for his resignation this week.
In 2003, Lam forgot a suitcase at Hanoi airport when he returned from an official trip to central Vietnam. Airport staff opened the case and found 10 envelopes inside, stuffed with more than 11,000 dollars in cash.
Lam claimed most of the money was from "friends and colleagues" who wanted him to buy "rhino horns" and other valuables for them in Hanoi, admitting only to receiving a personal gift of 140 dollars, state media said.
Prime Minister Dung -- a former state bank chief with close police and military ties, who was confirmed last week along with a new cabinet and president -- has pledged to drive economic reform and tackle graft.
Fighting corruption has been a key demand of the foreign business and donor community as Vietnam seeks to open its small but vibrant economy to foreign trade and investment by joining the World Trade Organisation this year.
The new government has pledged to set up a new anti-corruption board headed by a deputy premier and has ordered police to speed up their PMU 18 probe, setting a July 20 deadline for results.
The scandal is likely to claim more scalps.
From his jail cell, PMU 18's former head Dung has reportedly admitted to paying 20,000 dollars to another senior policeman, Lieutenant Colonel Do Huy Kim, in a vain effort to buy himself protection.
By Frank Zeller - Agence France Presse - July 7, 2006.
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