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WALL STREET JOURNAL
Communist Purge Plays Out in Vietnam’s Trial
of the Decade
A Hanoi court on Monday
sentenced a former official to life in prison, calling it ‘a necessary
warning against the abuse of power’ By James Hookway The
disappearance of a former Vietnamese official in Berlin last summer gave
the outside world an early glimpse into an anticorruption drive
captivating communist-run Vietnam.
Germany said Vietnamese agents kidnapped Trinh Xuan Thanh, who had been
seeking asylum there. But Vietnam said the former executive at
state-owned oil-and-gas giant PetroVietnam returned home of his own
accord to face corruption charges stemming from losses of $150 million. On
Monday, a Hanoi court sentenced him to life in prison. He was convicted
alongside other defendants, including a former Politburo member who had
once been groomed as a potential senior leader and who was himself
ordered to serve 13 years. Other officials and executives were handed
sentences ranging from a 13-month suspended sentence to 22 years in
prison. In
its ruling, the court said the severe sentences were “a necessary
warning against the abuse of power.” The
spectacle of Mr. Thanh being led into court over the past few weeks,
disheveled and handcuffed along with the former Ho Chi Minh City party
boss Dinh La Thang, garnered a flurry of attention in Vietnam. On
one level it is Vietnam’s largest anticorruption trial in years, and an
indication of the Communist Party’s efforts to rid itself of a problem
that could undermine its authority in one of Asia’s fastest-growing
economies.
Besides Messrs. Thanh and Thang—the latter was a former chairman of
PetroVietnam before becoming transport minister and then party chief in
Vietnam’s largest city—20 other defendants are on trial for alleged
corruption offenses. The
investigations and trials appear set to widen. In a concurrent mass
trial in Hanoi, another 46 defendants, mostly officials and bankers, are
accused of defrauding a bank. A
separate September embezzlement case against 51 other officials and
bankers resulted in one executive being sentenced to death for
corruption, while several others were given lengthy prison sentences.
Berlin-based Transparency International’s annual corruption ranking
places Vietnam at 113 out of 176 countries surveyed, behind neighbors
including Thailand and the Philippines.
Efforts at tackling corruption tend to find support among ordinary
Vietnamese, who say they’re tired of having to pay bribes to secure
places in schools for their children. Traffic police regularly take
motorcyclists aside in an attempt to extract payments. On
another level, the crackdown reflects an internal power struggle shaping
the ruling Communist Party, much as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s
anticorruption purges in China marginalized some of his potential
rivals. Some analysts say that as such, the purge may do little to
address the broader corruption problem afflicting the country.
Vietnam’s top leader, 73-year-old Communist Party General Secretary
Nguyen Phu Trong launched the crackdown in early 2016 after
outmaneuvering his chief rival, former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung,
for the senior post. An orthodox Marxist, Mr. Trong and his supporters
took umbrage with some of the loose management and corruption that
thrived under Mr. Dung’s 10-year tenure as premier.
“Mr. Dung either tolerated or turned a blind eye to the network of
corrupt officials that grew each year he was in power,” said Carlyle
Thayer, an expert on Vietnam and emeritus professor at the Australian
Defence Force Academy in Canberra.
After Mr. Dung left the Politburo, with his term as prime minister over
and no other post to grab onto, investigators began probing many of his
closest business associates and political allies, including Mr. Thang,
the former Ho Chi Minh City party chief. Mr.
Dung couldn’t be reached for comment.
The investigations appear unlikely to affect Vietnam’s relationships
with China or the U.S.
Hanoi has a prickly relationship with Beijing, and the two countries
both claim parts of the South China Sea. To counter China’s growing
influence, Vietnam in recent years has warmed to the U.S., which now
regularly sends naval vessels to its ports and is Vietnam’s largest
export market. Mr.
Thang, 57, was widely viewed as one of the former prime minister’s
protégés. After serving as chairman of PetroVietnam, he was tapped by
Mr. Dung to head Vietnam’s transport ministry. Later, he was promoted to
the Politburo and assigned to lead the Communist Party in Ho Chi Minh
City, a role that could have been a stepping stone to higher office.
Foreign media aren’t allowed access to the trials. State media reported
Mr. Thang as telling the court last week: “I trust the party leadership
and the fair and objective judgment of the court.” Mr.
Thang last week denied the corruption allegation against him. He is
accused of knowingly channeling state contracts to PetroVietnam’s
financially-troubled construction unit, from which funds were later
embezzled. His
lawyers had asked the court to change the charge to negligence, saying
there was insufficient evidence. Some officials who are on trial have
said they were following instructions from Mr. Thang.
Lawyers for Mr. Thanh, the defendant who had been in Berlin seeking
asylum, have said there was insufficient evidence to convict him. But
the court ruled Monday that he had embezzled funds over a 14-year
period. He also faces a separate embezzlement trial later this week,
which carries a potential death penalty. In
an editorial published in state newspapers this month, Truong Tan Sang,
a former president and another of Mr. Dung’s critics, said the party’s
battle against what he called its “internal enemies” must continue. |