HANOI: A court in Vietnam convicted 46 former bankers and businessmen of corruption on Monday over a multi-million-dollar lending scam spearheaded by the once-powerful chairman of Vietnam’s Construction Bank.
It is the latest in a series of major banking trials aimed at cleaning up the opaque sector long plagued by bad debts, corruption and nepotism. Vietnam’s communist leaders have vowed to target the banking business as they wage a sweeping anti-graft campaign which observers say is unprecedented in its scope and scale.
The government said it is weeding out bad actors, while critics say it is also eliminating political foes in the process. The latest bankers and executives jailed are accused of causing losses of more than $257 million in an elaborate lending scheme involving Vietnam’s Construction Bank (VNCB), according to the official newspaper of the justice department of Ho Chi Minh City.
VNCB’s former head Pham Cong Danh was found guilty of overseeing an illegal lending scheme between VNCB, other allied banks and 29 private companies to which he had ties. The companies were unable to repay the money and VNCB was eventually sold to the central bank for $0 in 2015.
Danh was given 20 years in jail for "deliberate wrongdoings... causing serious consequences", the newspaper said, while his accomplices were given terms ranging from 10 years in jail to a two-year suspended sentence. It was the second guilty verdict for Danh, who was convicted in a connected banking corruption trial in 2016. He will now serve a total of 30 years in jail.
After Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, Warsaw did not officially recognise him as US president for several weeks
“If you tell this story anywhere in Europe, no one is going to believe you,” Magyar said
Many Panamanians streaming out of voting stations cited graft as one of their main concerns
The previous longest baguette of 132.62 meters was baked in the Italian city of Como in June 2019
The village is in northwest of onetime Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka which Russia captured in February
Lauga reached out to police early on April 28 and an investigation is underway, she said in an instagram post