The Rescue Flights Trial Ends
The Rescue Flights Trial Ends
With no compensation for victims
Good morning! Hello to all new readers, and welcome to the latest Vietnam Weekly, written by reporter Mike Tatarski. This edition is exclusively for paying subscribers, while the newsletter published every Friday is open to everyone. You can subscribe below to access this and all future subscriber-only features, as well as the full Vietnam Weekly archive, for US$5/month or US$50/year below.
I spent the weekend in Kuala Lumpur and had the opportunity to see Oppenheimer (rather astonishing, and a full house for a 10:30 am IMAX screening) and Barbie (an absolute joy and the now-infamous map was as cartoonish as expected). With the former not opening in Vietnam until August 11 and the latter banned, the country has missed out on an international cultural moment.
On to the news.
Before we get into today’s topic, a few quick anti-corruption notes: Nguyễn Văn Sơn, the former head of the Vietnam Coast Guard who embezzled US$2.1 million from the force’s budget, was sentenced to 16 years in jail last month. Four other officials involved in the case will spend 15 years in prison.
The trial for Lê Thanh Thản, chairman of the infamous Muong Thanh Group, will begin on August 10. And the director of the National Center for Judicial Records was recently arrested for taking bribes related to the issuance of criminal records. That arrest is linked to a nationwide investigation into foreigners staying illegally in Vietnam which I will discuss in the future.
The trial
Two weeks ago I covered the start of the sprawling repatriation flight trial, the first of the two major pandemic-era corruption cases set to be tried this year.
The proceedings ended on Friday with sentencing announced for all 54 defendants. We’ll get to that, but I’d like to start with the most damning result of the trial: the Hanoi People’s Court found "no basis for consideration" regarding victims of the rescue flight scheme receiving compensation for the US$9.5 million in bribes accumulated through the process.