Vietnam’s Minister of Public Security To Lam has requested that the entire police force tighten discipline and refrain from any law or corruption offences, in the wake of recent high-profile cases involving police officers.

The request was conveyed to all units under the ministry, and local-level police units countrywide in a dispatch signed by the minister on Friday.

The Ministry of Public Security has achieved several milestones in fighting against crimes and ensuring public and social order in recent years, but there are still unsolved issues with regard to discipline and ethics of police officers, according to the document.

The ministry has detected and sanctioned multiple cases involving police officers, including high-ranking officials, who assisted or abetted criminals or committed fraud or asset misappropriation.

These cases have been reported by local press, and these media reports could well be abused, such as turned into fake news and spread on social media, by hostile forces, which will damage the reputation and image of the police force.

Minister Lam has demanded that discipline among the police force be tightened, with head of police units now tasked with keeping a close watch on their subordinates in order to detect corrupt officers before their commit any wrongdoings.

File photo Phan Van Vinh, former director general of the Police General Department who is being investigated for his role in an illegal online gambling ring.

The latest example for high-ranking police officers to involve in crimes is the online gambling ring busted in September 2017, with a former head of the Police General Department and an ex-chief of the hi-tech police unit among those probed.

Former lieutenant general Phan Van Vinh, who was director general of the ministry’s police general department until July last year, was arrested and taken into custody for four months on Friday to clarify his role in the ring.

Major General Nguyen Thanh Hoa, former head of the hi-tech crime prevention division under the Ministry of Public Security, was also detained and stripped of his title in March for the same probe.

These two top police officers are among 83 defendants being investigated for their role in the illegal gambling ring that raked in more than VND9.58 trillion (US$422 million) from online punters countrywide.