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17 officials may pay $1.2 mln for losses out of own pockets

17 officials may pay $1.2 mln for losses out of own pockets

Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 16:14 GMT+7

The Finance Department of Binh Phuoc Province has submitted to the local government a list of seventeen officials who it said are responsible for paying VND25 billion (US$1.2 million) out of their own pockets to compensate for state losses. These officials include former chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Truong Tan Thieu, his deputy Nguyen Tan Loi, Pham Cong, director of the provincial Finance Department and former chief of the Secretariat of the provincial People’s Committee, and 14 others most of whom are leaders of localities or heads of state agencies in the province. The list was made based on the results of investigation of local police, which said this is just one of the three criminal cases in relation to former chairman Truong Tan Thieu, who was removed from his post on April 5, 2013. On February 22, 2013, provincial police detained three of the 17 above-mentioned officials. They are Nguyen Tuan Canh, 53, deputy director of the Justice Department and director of the Property Auction Service Center, Truong Van Pham, 55, deputy director of the Finance Department, and Nguyen Minh Luan, 51, director of the Land Development Fund. They are charged with “intentionally acting against the State’s economic management regulations and causing serious consequences.” According to the case file, the provincial People’s Committee in March 2008 set up a steering board led by Truong Tan Thieu, chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, for implementing a project to grow about 1,000 hectares of new rubber trees.

The board then decided to auction 323 hectares of existing rubber gardens to create a financial source for the project.

In May 2010, the provincial People’s Committee established a price fixing council for the auction. Pham was assigned to be chairman of the council while Canh and Luan were two members of the unit.

In August 2010, the Committee decided to sell 31 of the 323 hectares on a pilot basis at a starting price of VND353 million ($17,000) per hectare, but nobody took part in the auction.

Two months later, the Committee reduced the price by 30 percent to VND264 million per hectare without a consultation with the Standing Board of the provincial Party Committee.

In December 2010, the 31 hectares were sold at that price to some people, while the remaining 292 hectares were bought at the same price by a single bidder, Le Van Suong. Such a price was much lower than the market price of VND450-550 million per hectare at that time.

According to investigators, the random reduction of price has caused a loss of more than VND25 billion.

In November 2012 the Party Central Inspection Commission decided to give a warning to Thieu, and proposed that he be removed from his post as chairman of the People’s Committee.

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