A court in Vietnam on Friday jailed more than a dozen officials for up to 12 years for corruption over repatriation flights and quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, 54 officials and businesspeople were found guilty of receiving, offering or acting as go-between for bribes that state media said totalled US$9.5 million.

They included four former senior officials at the ministries of foreign affairs, health and public security, who were handed life sentences.

At the height of the pandemic in early 2020 Vietnam had closed its borders to almost everyone bar returning citizens.

The defendants in the two cases were accused of giving or taking bribes to help people get seats on repatriation flights and receive medical quarantines.

At the time, returnees faced complicated entry procedures, expensive flights and quarantine costs.

The defendants "took advantage of policies by the party, state and their positions.. to agree on bribes and did wrong... in bringing back citizens for medical quarantine," Cong Ly newspaper quoted the Friday verdict as saying.

Tran Tung, a former official for northern Thai Nguyen province, was found guilty of taking around $300,000 in bribes and commission for organising quarantine facilities.

He was given 12 years in jail for receiving bribes and abuse of power.

Sixteen other transport ministry, provincial officials and travel company employees were sentenced to up to three and a half years in jail on charges including bribery and abuse of power.

Last year, a Hanoi mother told AFP how she had spent over $10,000 to get her teenage daughter back to Vietnam from a boarding school in Europe at the peak of the pandemic.

The graft allegations come as part of an anti-corruption drive that has uncovered a number of deals done during Vietnam's pandemic response.

According to the public security ministry, in 2024, police put under their radar 825 cases with 1,676 people on corruption accusations, an increase of more than 16 percent compared to 2023.