Probe into Tenma Vietnam’s alleged bribery underway: police official

Hanoi (VNA) – The investigation into the Japanese-invested Tenma Vietnam company’s allegation of bribing civil servants and tax and customs officers of northern Bac Ninh province is still ongoing, according to a police official.

At the Government’s press conference on August 3, Maj. Gen. To An Xo, Chief of the Office of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), said following the Prime Minister’s order for the Ministry of Finance and the MPS to probe into this case, the MPS directed its relevant agencies and the Bac Ninh Department of Public Security to conduct investigation and asked the Finance Ministry’s Inspectorate to inspect this company’s tax payment.

However, he noted, the general director and production director of Tenma Vietnam already returned to Japan due to the COVID-19 outbreak and have yet to come back to Vietnam, so police haven’t been able to investigate these two persons.

The MPS has coordinated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Japan’s representative agency in Vietnam to collect information, and they will continue clarifying the case in line with regulations, Xo added.

According to the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan, some Japanese media outlets like the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, Kyodo news agency and Nikkei reported that the Tenma Vietnam Co. Ltd, whose parent company is based in Tokyo, had given two bribes worth 25 million JPY (over 235,000 USD) in total to several Vietnamese civil servants to persuade them to reduce the tax arrears the firm had to pay.

Responding to the report, on May 25, the Finance Ministry assigned its inspectorate to set up a team to inspect the taxation and customs departments of Bac Ninh, along with collectives and individuals concerned.

The Vietnamese general departments of taxation and customs suspended 11 officials from work to serve the investigation./.