Government digs up widespread land graft

These land abuses by officials, such as illegally allocating land and acquiring plots for themselves or friends and relatives, have been particularly rife in the northern town of Do Son in Haiphong, the capital Hanoi and Phu Quoc island in Kien Giang province.
The authorities in the port city of Haiphong last week set up a taskforce to resolve illegal land allocations by officials from the Do Son People’s Committee that the State Inspectorate recently discovered after a local resident made accusations.
Former colonel and Communist Party member, Dinh Dinh Phu, denounced Do Son town leaders over the fraudelent allocation of 101 plots of land to relatives and residents.
Phu pointed out that these plots were supposed to be used for tourism purposes but local officials had allocated the land for private housing developments.
State Inspectorate investigations backed up Phu’s claims and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai late last month ordered Haiphong People’s Committee to discipline wrongdoers.
The government blamed the activities on Do Son People’s Committee and Haiphong Department of Natural Resources and Environment, stating these agencies had deliberately violated regulations on land use and management.
Haiphong People’s Committee last week revoked the allocation decision and asked officials from its departments of construction, and natural resources and environment, to self-discipline and explain their actions.
The Do Son scandal is the most recent example of how local officials have abused their positions to acquire or allocate land illegally. It is commonplace in these cases that officials often allocated land to their relatives.
In the capital city, a high-ranking official Dao Tien Dung from the Hanoi Housing Development Corporation under the Ministry of Construction had been accused of pocketing $480,000 through illegal land sales last month.
Police from southern Kien Giang province last week concluded their investigation into high-ranking officials acquiring vast tracts of land in Phu Quoc island, a relatively untapped area that the government intends to develop as a world-class tourist destination.
The scandal involved two high-ranking officials from the Phu Quoc People’s Committee – former chairman Do To and former deputy chairman Le Minh Dung – who used their positions to assign land to themselves, relatives and other Kien Giang provincial officials.
When news started to filter through in 2000 that Phu Quoc would be earmarked as a high-class tourist spot, many investors flocked to purchase land on the island and caused land values to skyrocket. To and Dung took advantage of the frenzy to acquire thousands of square metres of land in various prime locations across the island.
The police last week suggested that relevant agencies recover nearly 40 hectares of land that To and Dung acquired.