Hanoi (VNA) – Party General Secretary and State President To Lam has ordered decisive action against serious and complex cases, making it clear that getting stolen assets back is the real test of the anti-corruption drive.
Preventing early and from afar
Chairing the 30th session of the Central Steering Committee for Prevention and Control of Corruption, Wastefulness, and Negative Phenomena in Hanoi on June 18, General Secretary and President Lam emphasised the need to continue translating the policies, tasks, and solutions outlined in Resolution No. 04-NQ/TW and Plan No. 03-KH/TW of the Politburo into concrete policies and institutional frameworks. He demanded a full-scale legal review to expose institutional gaps that incubate graft, wastefulness, as well as avoidance, evasion, and fear of responsibility.
Central to the push is an overhaul of the Land Law and the issuance of a special resolution tackling legal breaches across the state and private economic sectors, and sci-tech application, innovation and digital transformation. A systemic legal review will follow, amending or scrapping rules to close loopholes and put effective control mechanisms in place, he said.
He told the Government's Party Committee and local Party committees that every stalled project, every surplus building and plot of land left behind by administrative restructuring must be sorted out by the end of 2026. If delays or inertia persist, individual and collective accountability must be pinned down.
A nationwide digital inventory of state resources should pinpoint what is sitting idle, what is misallocated, what is undervalued, what needs to be built from zero, and who must unlock each, with clear deadlines, instruments, and measurable outcomes, he added.
The leader called for sharper early-and-remote prevention tools, fused with grassroots power controls and data-driven oversight. The emphasis is on tracking the performance of local officials and completing the rollout of five Politburo regulations on power control and the anti-graft fight, particularly in personnel work.
Administrative reform and digital transformation must be wired directly into anti-corruption efforts. National databases are to be completed, connected, and shared across ministries and localities so that monitoring is seamless and real-time.
The Party Committees of the Government and localities were tasked with clearing all protracted projects and surplus public assets post-restructuring, while stepping up probes into serious, complex cases of corruption, wastefulness, and misconduct in key economic sectors.
Priority targets include Long Thanh International Airport and foreign ministry headquarters projects, and probes in food safety, environment, minerals, energy, land management, finance, and banking.
Results begin to bite
Since the committee’s last gathering, the Party Central Committee, its Politburo and Secretariat have issued more than 30 resolutions, directives, regulations and conclusions on Party and political system building, socio-economic development and the fight against corruption, wastefulness, and negative phenomena in the first half.
The National Assembly and Government steered the review, amendment, and issuance of nearly 300 legal documents to promptly institutionalise the Party’s new directives.
Officials added another 1,501 stalled projects to the inventory, taking the backlog to 4,492. Of those, 1,531 have now been cleared entirely. On surplus state buildings and land, a national review counted 30,595 excess sites, with 14,992 put back to use.
Party and inspection bodies disciplined 65 Party organisations and 3,375 members. They recommended recovering 799.4 billion VND (29.6 million USD) and 31 ha of land, proposed administrative sanctions against 356 collectives and 1,192 individuals, and referred 13 cases with signs of criminal offences to investigative agencies.
Law enforcement and judicial authorities nationwide initiated legal proceedings against 1,985 new cases involving 4,671 suspects, prosecuted 1,886 cases with 4,520 defendants, and brought 1,721 cases with 4,415 defendants to first-instance trials for corruption, economic, and abuse-of-power offences.
The prosecution and trial stages clawed back more than 1.3 trillion VND. Civil judgment enforcement brought in over 3.996 trillion VND, including 1.841 trillion VND from cases directly tracked by the Steering Committee./.
