A former executive of a Vietnamese state-owned company has been found receiving money from a Japanese company that had admitted to paying over US$780,000 in kickbacks to win an ODA-funded project order in Vietnam in the 2008-2014 period.
>> Vietnam suspends railway official after $780k bribe allegation
>>Vietnam arrests 4 railway officials in alleged $780,000 Japanese bribe scandal
>>Vietnam railway official suspended indefinitely over alleged $780,000 Japanese bribe
Tran Quoc Dong, 50, an ex-deputy general director of the state-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation (VRC), earned tens of millions of dong from an amount of about VND1 billion ($47,200) Japan Transportation Consultants, Inc. (JTC) transferred to the VRC’s Railway Project Management Unit (RPMU) between October 2009 and May 2011 during which he worked as director of the unit, investigators said. (VND10 million ~ US$472)
For this reason, the investigation agency has decided to change charges against Dong from “negligence of responsibility, causing serious consequences” under Article 285 of the Penal Code to “abusing positions and/or powers while performing official duties” pursuant to Article 281 of the Penal Code.
The decision has been ratified by the Supreme People’s Procuracy.
The latest charge falls into the corruption category in the Penal Code while the old one is mainly related to titles and positions.
Dong may be sentenced to 15 years in jail if convicted compared to the maximum sentence of 12 years behind bars as stipulated in Article 285.
He was arrested on May 3 on charges of “negligence of responsibility, causing serious consequences” following articles by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper that Tamio Kakinuma, the president of JTC, admitted allegations his company had bribed civil servants in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan with ¥130 million ($1,271,790) to receive orders for Japanese ODA-funded projects in these countries.
The total illegal payments were made on about 40 occasions from February 2008 to February this year in relation to five ODA (official development assistance) projects, it revealed, saying that each payment was determined according to the value of the order.
The projects were related to railway construction design, construction surveillance and other services, with the orders received by joint ventures headed by JTC, the newspaper pointed out.
The paper elaborated that a total of ¥80 million ($782,640) was paid in return for an ODA project order worth ¥4.2 billion ($41,088,600) in Vietnam, while in Indonesia a total of ¥30 million was paid for three projects totaling about ¥2.9 billion.
Also being arrested on May 3 were Pham Quang Duy, 39, and Pham Hai Bang, 45, ex-deputy directors of the RPMU, and Nguyen Nam Thai, 37, the former head of the VRC’s project office 3.
On May 8, police continued to arrest Nguyen Van Hieu, 52, another former director of the RPMU. Hieu succeeded Dong in 2011.
A day earlier, police captured Tran Van Luc, who preceded Dong as director of the RPMU, also on the same charge as Hieu.
Duy, Bang, Thai, Hieu, and Luc have been charged with “abusing positions and/or powers while performing official duties.”
All the six defendants have committed offenses related to their involvement in the building of railway line No. 1 (the Yen Vien-Ngoc Hoi route) of the Hanoi urban railway project, investigators said.
A bid for design consultancy services for the project was launched in April 2008 and the JTC later won it.
On September 9, 2009, the VRC and a contractor consortium led by the JTC signed a technical consultancy service contract for the project.
Right after that, Dong replaced Luc as director of the RPMU and took office for 20 months before being promoted to deputy general director of the VRC.
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