Vietnam jails more officials over bribes involving Covid-19 flights and quarantine
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Vietnamese officials accused of corruption involving repatriation flights at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic at the Hanoi People’s Court on Dec 24.
PHOTO: AFP
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HANOI – A court in Vietnam on Dec 27 jailed more than a dozen officials for up to 12 years for corruption over repatriation flights and quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The case is part of a major anti-graft drive that has led to the resignation of a president and two deputy prime ministers in a country where political changes are usually carefully orchestrated.
In 2023, 54 officials and business people were found guilty of receiving, offering or acting as a go-between for bribes that the state media said totalled US$9.5 million (S$12.9 million).
They included four former senior officials at the ministries of foreign affairs, health and public security, who were handed life sentences.
At the height of the pandemic in early 2020, Vietnam closed its borders to almost everyone, bar returning citizens.
The defendants in the two cases were accused of giving or taking bribes to help people get seats on repatriation flights
At the time, returnees faced complicated entry procedures, expensive flights and quarantine costs.
The defendants “took advantage of policies by the party, state and their positions... to agree on bribes and did wrong... in bringing back citizens for medical quarantine”, Cong Ly newspaper quoted the Dec 27 verdict as saying.
Tran Tung, a former official for northern Thai Nguyen province, was found guilty of taking around US$300,000 in bribes and commission for organising quarantine facilities. He was given 12 years in jail for receiving bribes and abuse of power.
Sixteen other officials and travel company employees were sentenced to up to 3½ years in jail on charges including bribery and abuse of power.
In 2023, a Hanoi mother told AFP how she had spent more than US$10,000 to get her teenage daughter back to Vietnam from a boarding school in Europe at the peak of the pandemic.
The graft allegations come as part of an anti-corruption drive that has uncovered a number of deals done during Vietnam’s pandemic response.
In 2023, the National Assembly removed former foreign affairs minister Pham Binh Minh and Vu Duc Dam,
The crackdown also brought down then Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc after he “took political responsibility” for various officials’ shortcomings.
According to the public security ministry, in 2024, the police put on their radar 825 cases with 1,676 people on corruption accusations, an increase of more than 16 per cent compared with 2023. AFP
