DRAFTING.– A Vietnamese court on Friday ordered prison sentences for 54 people, including a former deputy foreign minister and several diplomats, implicated in a bribery case related to repatriation flights during the covid-19 pandemic.
The 54 convicted were found guilty of participating in a network of bribes that senior officials, diplomats and companies charged Vietnamese citizens who wanted to return to their country on repatriation flights organized by the government when the borders were closed due to the pandemic, said the VnExpress portal.
The highest-ranking convict is To Anh Dung, then vice foreign minister, who is to serve 16 years in prison, while three high-level officials have been sentenced to life in prison for taking bribes.
One of them, Pham Trung Kien, former secretary of the Vice Minister of Health, evaded the death sentence that the prosecution had requested for showing his repentance and returning more than 42.2 billion dong (1.78 million dollars or 1.61 million euros ).
Among the defendants, 25 were found guilty of receiving bribes totaling 175 billion dong (7.38 million dollars or 6.71 million euros).
This macro trial, which has been resolved 12 days ahead of schedule after starting on July 11, has taken place in the midst of the strong anti-corruption campaign that Vietnam has experienced in recent years.
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Vietnam was one of the countries that adopted the most drastic measures in closing its borders, which caused thousands of Vietnamese to have problems returning to their country.
The authorities organized nearly 800 charter flights to bring their citizens home, an initiative that became implicated in a web of bribery and corruption.
After the scandal, Nguyen Xuan Phuc submitted his resignation, in which some analysts saw a covert dismissal by considering him politically responsible for corruption in the management of flights.
Another case of corruption during the pandemic was that of bribery during the sale of tests to detect the covid-19 virus, which led to the expulsion from the Communist Party of the then Minister of Health, Nguyen Thanh Long, and the mayor of Hanoi, Chu Ngoc Anh.
