Vietnam officials go on trial over Covid-19 flight bribes
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Former Vietnam deputy prime minister Pham Binh Minh, seen here in a 2022 photo, was removed from his post last year. He and fellow DPM Vu Duc Dam was tasked with overseeing the pandemic response.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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HANOI - More than a dozen Vietnamese officials went on trial in Hanoi on Dec 24 for alleged corruption over repatriation flights during the Covid-19 pandemic, a scandal that saw 54 people jailed in 2023.
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 the go-between for bribes that 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.
Among the 17 facing court proceedings on Dec 24 on charges of bribery, power abuse and hiding of criminals are transport ministry and provincial officials, as well as travel company employees.
The amount involved in this case is about US$350,000, with the trial expected to last about a week.
At the height of the pandemic in early 2020 – when Vietnam had closed its borders to almost everyone bar returning citizens – the defendants allegedly gave or took bribes to help people get seats on repatriation flights.
At the time, returnees faced complicated entry procedures, expensive flights and quarantine costs.
In 2023, a mother in Hanoi told AFP how she had spent over 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 Covid-19 pandemic response.
In 2023, the country’s rubber-stamp National Assembly removed former foreign minister Pham Binh Minh and Mr Vu Duc Dam
The crackdown also brought down then President Nguyen Xuan Phuc after he “took political responsibility” for various officials’ shortcomings. AFP
