No Respite from Corruption
No Respite from Corruption
The campaign powers ahead
Good morning! Hello to new readers, and welcome to the last edition of the Vietnam Weekly before Tết. I’ll be back in your inbox the week of February 19 as we begin the Year of the Dragon.
Today’s newsletter is exclusively for paying subscribers - if you haven’t already, you can upgrade to receive all future weekly articles like this for US$8/month or US$90/year. Group subscriptions are available at a 20% discount per person.
Good luck to everyone flying out of Tân Sơn Nhất this week (myself included): from February 1-3, 659 out of almost 1,100 flights departing from the airport were delayed, many by hours.
On to the news.
There’s never a dull moment in the ongoing anti-corruption campaign, with numerous big developments in the public and private sectors since I last wrote about the ‘blazing furnace.’
Last year, the number of corruption cases brought against government officials doubled from 2022 (2,079 defendants in 2023) - will we see the same growth this year?
I’ll start with three items on the more amusing side of things.
Staff at the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City installed security cameras and extra fire safety equipment to protect six tons of files related to the colossal Vạn Thịnh Phát scandal. That trial is set to begin sometime after Tết and will be quite the event.
Also in HCMC, the municipal Party Committee will pay up to VND10 million (US$410) to people who report corruption “if their information is accurate and helps the competent agencies verify and handle corruption and negative acts.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs drafted a decree stating that senior government officials must not be hungry for “fame or power.”
Below, we’ll get into:
The outcome of the Viet A test kit trial
Trouble at the Ministry of Industry and Trade
FLC’s ongoing woes
The blurry line between public & private land
Lâm Đồng’s ousted leadership