Vietnam’s Investigation Police Agency has arrested two executives from the almost-bankrupt state-owned shipbuilding company ‘Vinashin’ over charges of embezzlement. Truong Van Tuyen, the company’s former General Director, and Pham Thanh Son, Deputy General Director, encounter legal proceedings for ‘abusing position’ to transfer funds for individual use.
Namely, Son and Tuyen collaborated with the company’s former accountant to transfer $4.5 million in illegal deposits at Ocean Bank. The arrest was by the Central Steering Committee on Corruption Prevention and Control, as well as the Ministry of Public Security.
What’s more, the Ocean Bank has now been accused of being connected with other corruption cases. As a result, many of the Bank’s employees have been already sentenced to prison and previous bank director Nguyen Xuan Son is faced with a death sentence for abuse of power and embezzlement.
The company has been previously connected with other embezzlement scandals. In February 2017, three former executives of Vinashinlines, the shipbuilder’s shipping subsidiary, were jailed for stealing $11.3 million from shipping contracts completed in 2006-2008.
Moreover, Giang Kim Dat, Vinashinlines’ former business director, and Tran Van Liem, the division’s former director-general, have been sentenced to death. They lost an appeal six months later. Prosecutors called for strict sentences because the state-owned company became a loss-making business after the theft occurred.
Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, or SBIC, previously named Vinashin, has undergone an important restructuring program since its debt-burdened collapse in 2010, which occurred just as it launched a major partnership with a leading European shipbuilder
In 2013, Vietnam’s ministry of finance swapped $600 million in outstanding Vinashin loans for new government-backed bonds. The loan went into default in December 2010 when Vinashin missed the first payment installment of $60 million.
Concluding,Vietnam is ranked 107 out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, among the lowest in the region.
