All 14 railway officials and ex-officials ordered to report about their involvement in a Japanese ODA-funded project after a Japanese consultant company said it had to pay over US$780,000 in kickbacks to win a project order in Vietnam have declared that they did not receive bribes from the Japanese firm.
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This information was released by chief inspector of the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport Nguyen Van Huyen at a press conference in Hanoi on Wednesday.
These 14 people were required to submit their reports by March 31 after Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported last month that Japan Transportation Consultants, Inc. (JTC) paid ¥80 million ($782,640) in bribes in return for an ODA (official development assistance) project order worth ¥4.2 billion ($41,088,600) in Vietnam.
In two articles published on March 20 and 21, Yomiuri Shimbun alleged that JTC bribed civil servants in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan from February 2008 to February of this year with ¥130 million ($1,271,790) in order to receive orders for five Japanese ODA-funded projects in these countries.
A Vietnamese railway official was mentioned in one of the two reports.
A project to build the Yen Vien-Ngoc Hoi railway route in Hanoi is now suspected to be in association with the allegation. All the fourteen are, or used to be, in some way related to this project.
JTC is the consultant for the Hanoi project, chief inspector Huyen said.
Following the accusation, the Vietnam Railway Authority (VRA) under the Ministry of Transport and the state-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation (VRC) demanded that the fourteen people submit their relevant reports, Huyen said, adding that four of them have even been suspended.
Everyone handed in their reports on time, in which they affirmed that they were not involved in the alleged bribery, the chief inspector said.
Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Hong Truong, who chaired the press briefing, said, “The alleged scandal is being investigated by competent agencies of both Vietnam and Japan… When the investigation results are available, the government will publicize them.”
Last week, the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport set up a team led by chief inspector Huyen to look into the alleged corruption.
The ministry also organized a hotline, (+84) 0986 093 979, to receive information related to the scandal.
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