The vice president of a Hanoi graduate school has lodged a complaint with a local court against the head of Vietnam’s education ministry after the latter invalidated his doctoral degree last month, as he was found plagiarizing a PhD thesis ten years ago.

Hoang Xuan Que, vice president of the School of Banking and Finance under the National Economics University, has sued Pham Vu Luan, Minister of Education and Training, the People’s Court in the capital confirmed.

The court said it had notified Luan of the complaint and asked him to submit his formal responses and other related documents by November 14.

A source from the ministry told Tuoi Tre that Luan had authorized a subordinate to carry out the formalities as instructed by the court.

The Ministry of Education and Training made a decision in mid-October to revoke Xuan Que’s PhD degree following the confirmation of his plagiarism from academics.

Xuan Que, who is also an associate professor, had been accused by three people of plagiarizing another thesis to write his doctoral paper on Vietnam’s monetary policy, which he successfully defended in 2003. One of the three accusers was the chairman of the board that judged Xuan Que’s thesis.

He was alleged to have copied 30 percent of a paper written in 2002 by Mai Thanh Que, an official at Banking Academy, also located in the capital.

A council of academics in the economic field then verified the accusation and confirmed that Xuan Que plagiarized Thanh Que’s dissertation.

The vice president stole 52.5 pages from the Banking Academy official’s 159-page thesis and pasted them into his own, the council asserted.

Xuan Que has repeatedly denied both the accusation and confirmation, saying he did not plagiarize Thanh Que’s work.