Drivers of vehicles they do not own will be not fined, and traffic police will only penalize the present owner of a vehicle who has failed to carry out procedures for an ownership change, a police official confirmed. However, some lawyers said such penalties are groundless. Major General Nguyen Van Tuyen, head of the Road and Railway Traffic Department, confirmed the regulation with Tuoi Tre yesterday amidst the public’s worry about whether the driver of a vehicle will be fined in case traffic police discover that he or she is not the owner of the vehicle, according to Decree 71 that took effect on November 10. Police only penalize those who possess a vehicle that could have been sold, transferred or presented to him while procedures for change of ownership have yet to be completed, Tuyen said. That means drivers who are not the owners of such vehicles are not subject to a fine, which is VND2-4 million (US$96-192) for owners of motorbikes and VND6-10 million for cars' owners. Specifically, a fine will be issued in case police can prove that a vehicle’s ownership has been changed for more than 30 days, but the procedures for this transfer have not been carried out. In a complex case, police can ask the previous owner of the vehicle for clarification.

It is the responsibility of those who buy a vehicle to contact the original owner of the vehicle to go through a transfer of ownership. Police will not accept cases in which the present owner of a vehicle argues that he or she cannot carry out ownership procedures since before it was owned by him or her, it was owned by several others who cannot be contacted now, Tuyen said. Nguyen Hoang Hiep, deputy chairman of the National Traffic Safety Committee, said it is necessary to identify who is the actual owner of a vehicle and to impose a fine on those who own vehicles but fail to carry out procedures for an ownership change. Previous decrees have mentioned this issue, but such a fine has not been strictly applied due to a variety of reasons, Hiep said.No legal foundation Meanwhile, lawyer Nguyen Thi Minh Huyen, from the Ho Chi Minh Bar Association, said that neither Traffic Law or Civil Code has an article that requires the owner of a vehicle to go through an ownership change when that owner sells or presents the vehicle to another person. The ownership of property is a legal right of citizens, and people are not required to go through a change in property ownership when that property is sold, bought, transferred or presented as a gift, the lawyer said. “Carrying out procedures for an ownership change is not an obligation but a right of the owner of a property.” Another lawyer, Vo Xuan Trung, from the same association, said that if a driver of a vehicle can show the vehicle registration certificate to traffic police, then that driver cannot be fined, in case he or she is not the owner of the vehicle. And in such a case, traffic police have no right to force the driver to prove that he or she has bought or rented the vehicle from others, Trung said.