Hanoi (VNA) - The trial of Pho Duc Nam (Mr Pip) and his accomplices continued on the morning of October 30, with the court questioning defendants, including Nguyen Hoa Binh, also known as Shark Binh, and his employees, over alleged money laundering.
Binh testified that he founded Ngan Luong Company in 2012. By 2018, he built it into a group with more than 10 member companies and investments in roughly 40 tech startups.
At Ngan Luong, Binh said he imposed a consistent customer protection rule for e-wallet operations. Complaints meant holding funds, locking the account at issue and settling the customer’s petition thoroughly. If that failed, the company had to refund the customer.
Binh said Nam’s company system was a large customer with high transaction volume, so Ngan Luong assigned dedicated staff to support Nam, without consulting him.
Later, as complaints mounted, Ngan Luong met Nam, discussed the cases and required him to handle customers properly. Nam himself had earlier told the court that Ngan Luong was very strict on complaints.
But Binh also admitted that when police documents sought checks on accounts tied to trading floors run by Nam’s company, he told his staff to pass the information to Nam. The aim was to keep and serve a major customer and lift company revenue.
In court, Binh said he understood his responsibility for directing Ngan Luong staff and accepted punishment for money laundering as charged in the People’s Procuracy indictment.
According to the indictment, in June 2020, Binh, Nguyen Thi Nam and Tran Thi Thanh Tam know that trading platforms operated by Mr. Pip, including GKFX, DK Trade, ASX, ACX, Sea Investing, HonorFX and ScopeMarket, were involved in criminal activities and were under investigation by the police.
However, seeking to profit from transaction fees, Binh directed Nguyen Thi Nam and Tam to keep servicing the Ngan Luong wallets used by those floors, and to discuss with Mr. Pip and floor staff how to falsify data and give police fake wallet information and transaction histories, obstructing checks on victims’ money flows and the Ngan Luong wallets’ operations.
From June 15, 2020 through September 23, 2022, 232 victims channeled nearly 319 billion VND (12.2 million USD) into Ngan Luong wallet accounts. The conduct of Binh, Tam and Nguyen Thi Nam constituted “money laundering”.
The People’s Procuracy said defendants Pho Duc Thang and Le Thi Lieu (Mr. Pip’s parents) used more than 146 billion VND from his crimes, plus 40 billion VND of their own to buy two apartments. From April 11 to May 10, 2024, though knowing the sources, Lieu still received 121 billion VND from his son and Thang, including more than 80 billion VND from his crimes. She then placed online saving deposits and rolled them over repeatedly. After Nam was detained by Hanoi investigation police, Lieu withdrew funds, bought gold and US dollars and sent them to relatives to avoid detection and seizure.
Thang and Lieu were also charged with "money laundering" over their alleged involvement in the scheme./.
