Lenient verdict sparks public outrage

Late last month, the Haiphong People’s Court ruled that three high-ranking officials from Do Son town had “not adhered to state regulations” even though state investigations found the officials had misappropriated tens of thousands of square metres of resettlement land for themselves, their families and senior officials. The court issued a warning to the defendants and required them to pay VND50,000 in court fees.
The defendants are former Do Son party chief Vu Duc Van, former chairman of the town’s people’s committee Hoang Anh Hung and former deputy chairman of the committee Luu Kim Thai.
The Do Son land scandal was unveiled by state investigators last year following a petition by a veteran in Haiphong. The investigations and court case have sent the media into frenzy for months and triggered public outrage. Following the court ruling, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung called on the Supreme People’s Procuracy and the Supreme People’s Court to scrutinise the case. Dung said the court decision ran counter to the country’s efforts to crack down on widespread corruption among civil servants.
In response, the Haiphong court has officially admitted that its ruling was subject to a series of written requests from municipal leaders, who said the court should handle the defendants softly due to their very good working records.
The local media also reported that one of the city’s leaders had told an official meeting that since some other big corruption scandals had not been treated as crimes, the Do Son case did not need to be. The city’s leaders also advised the court against prosecuting the former head of its Department of the Environment and Natural Resources Chu Minh Tuan for his role in the scandal as “he had made big contributions to the city and his health was not good”.
The three defendants could have been jailed for between one and five years for the charge of “abusing power and position while conducting public work”.
“These fines are just a joke. Who knows how much they have benefited from the large amounts of land that they have misused?” said Bui Dinh Nguyen, a 60-year-old veteran in Hanoi. “The ruling is particularly unacceptable at a time when Vietnam is doing more than ever to fight corruption,” Nguyen said.
The calls for leniency from the city’s leaders have been seen as moves to protect the defendants, as they and their relatives had allegedly been allocated land by the lawbreakers.
Nguyen Quang Loc, the chief of the administrative affairs office at the Supreme People’s Court, said the court has asked the Haiphong court to hand over the documents for scrutiny.



No. 778/September 11-17, 2006