The Vietnam Railway Authority (VNRA) said on Monday that it has imposed a suspension on a senior official and requested that he report on issues related to a case in which the leader of a Japanese consultant firm said it paid over US$780,000 in kickbacks in exchange for a Japanese ODA-funded project order in Vietnam.
>> Vietnamese railway officials deny involvement in alleged $780k graft case >> Vietnam, Japan to jointly handle alleged $780k bribery >> Vietnam sets up team to probe alleged $780k bribery
Accordingly, Tran Van Luc has been suspended for an indefinite period from his post as director of the railway project management unit (RPMU) under the VNRA.
The VNRA has also assigned Doan Tang Ong, Luc’s deputy, to be in charge of the RPMU during Luc’s suspension.
Luc is required to report about his responsibilities in the building of railway line No. 1 of the Hanoi urban railway project during the time he was director of the management unit for this project, whose investor is the state-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation (VRC), from 2000 to 2009, the VNRA said.
The authority also requested that Luc submit a report to the chief inspector of the Ministry of Transport to clarify what he did in the building of the railway line No. 1 (Yen Vien-Ngoc Hoi route) in the capital city and his relevant personal responsibilities.
Luc is also required to confirm in his report whether he received money from Japan Transportation Consultants, Inc. (JTC), whose leader admitted to paying more than $780,000 in kickbacks in exchange for a railway project order in Vietnam.
Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported in March that Tamio Kakinuma, president of JTC, admitted allegations that the firm 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, the Japanese newspaper 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.
14 officials deny involvement in graft
As previously reported, Luc was once suspended by the VNRA for 15 days from March 24 to April 7, 2014 for the same reason.
Along with Luc, Tran Quoc Dong, a deputy general director of the VRC, and Ngo Anh Tao, another deputy general director of the VRC, who currently supervises the VRC’s management board for railway projects, were also suspended for the same number of days.
Earlier on March 23, Nguyen Van Hieu, director of the management board for railway projects under the VRC, was also suspended for 15 days for investigation.
A few days after these suspensions, the Ministry of Transport asked ten more people to submit reports about their involvement in the alleged bribery case. Of the ten people, three are already retired.
They are required to make reports about what they have done and how they were involved in the project to build the Yen Vien-Ngoc Hoi railway route in the capital city using Japan’s ODA.
After that, all 14 railway officials and ex-officials declared that they did not receive bribes from the Japanese firm, chief inspector of the Ministry of Transport Nguyen Van Huyen said at a press conference on April 2.
In a related development, Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc Dong said on Monday that over the past several days, police have summoned a number of people who are incumbent or former officials at the VRC to question them about issues in connection with the alleged graft.
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