The managing director of pharmaceutical firm Bayer Vietnam has been fined VND30 million (US$1,280) for disseminating an internal document containing an image of China’s illegal ‘nine-dash line.’

Nguyen Duc Tho, chief inspector of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Information and Communications, on Thursday signed a decision to impose the fine upon Bayer Vietnam’s managing director Lynette Moey Yu Lin, a Chinese-Malaysian woman, for providing information that wrongly shows Vietnam’s sovereignty.

Authorities also confiscated her smartphone, which she had used to send emails that contained the internal document.

She was required to withdraw and remove such wrongful information.

The executive had sent a 19-megabyte file on prevention and control of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to nine company employees by email on April 27.

A page in the digital document was found to feature a map of China which includes the infamous ‘nine-dash line,’ an arbitrary demarcation line used by China to represent its unlawful claims to nearly all of the East Vietnam Sea.

Pursuant to Bayer Vietnam's working procedures, documents from the managing director will be sent to department heads, who would subsequently share them with lower-level employees.

However, the company stated that none other than the nine initial email recipients had received the file in question.

Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company operating in the fields of healthcare and agriculture.

Bayer Vietnam, which currently has about 700 employees, has been present in the country since 1994, according to a declaration on its website.

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