“Nguyen Duc Kien is an ambitious businessman who gives ACB a real boost,” Ly Xuan Hai, ex-general director of Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank, once said in the bank’s magazine, Dat Viet newspaper has reported.

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Hai considered himself a member of the second generation of leaders at the bank in an interview for ACB magazine issued for the 2009 Vietnamese Lunar New Year, or Tet.

"Specific people, like Tran Mong Hung, Nguyen Duc Kien, and Pham Trung Cang, are those with distinguished personalities, making up the backbone of the success of the bank,” Hai said.

“They have helped ACB avoid any problems since the beginning, and they are creating the culture and personality of the bank."

Regarding Nguyen Duc Kien, Hai said Kien “is an ambitious man who transfers his goals, some of which seem impossible, into ACB and achieves these ambitions through fierce determination.”

Also in the interview, when asked why the ACB founders were withdrawing gradually from the administrative apparatus of the bank, Hai said: "When the child grows up, he will receive less attention from his parents.”

“ACB is moving away from a bank bearing the personal imprint to a period marked by an administrative apparatus.”

“The days when the founding shareholders had to consider each loan contract is in the past, this is now the time of the administrative apparatus, which will operate based on professional mechanisms".

Bitter reality

The arrest sent ACB shares plummeting at VND22,500 per share, with 1.1 million shares remaining unsold on Wednesday.

Even worse, a large number of ACB depositors rushed to the bank’s offices and branches to withdraw their money, forcing the State Bank of Vietnam to pump trillions of dong as liquidity aid.

Hai himself was implicated when the police invited him to cooperate in the investigation of Kien’s case.