Two ex-leaders of the Vietnam-Russia oil and gas joint venture Vietsovpetro (Source: dantri.com) Hanoi (VNA) – The HanoiPeople’s Court opened a trial on March 21 for two ex-leaders of theVietnam-Russia oil and gas joint venture Vietsovpetro on the charge of “abusingposition and power to appropriate assets.”
The case is part of the second-phaseinvestigation in connection with the massive fraud case at the Ocean CommercialJoint Stock Bank (OceanBank) that involved the bank’s former Chairman Ha VanTham.
The two defendants are formerGeneral Director of Vietsovpetro Tu Thanh Nghia and former chief accountant ofthe firm Vo Quang Huy.
According to the indictment, Vietsovpetrobegan using payment account services of and had some fixed-term depositcontracts with OceanBank at the end of 2008.
By 2009, it had many fixed-term depositcontracts and maintained a large payment account balance at the OceanBankbranch in Vung Tau city. This was in line with the direction of the VietnamNational Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) – which represents the VietnameseGovernment in contributing 51 percent (or 765 million USD) of Vietsovpetro’scharter capital – regarding prioritising financial services of OceanBank, towhich PetroVietnam contributed 20 percent of the charter capital.
Between late 2008 and 2014, Vietsovpetrosigned 54 deposit contracts in VND worth 13.2 trillion VND, and 70 others inUSD worth a total 1.26 billion USD.
It opened four payment accounts, comprisingthree in Vietnamese and one in USD, at OceanBank with monthly balancemaintained from 200 billion VND to 900 billion VND, and from 10 million USD to400 million USD. The bank gave the firm more than 49.7 billion VND and 595,283USD as interest each month.
Meanwhile, then Chairman of the Board ofDirectors of OceanBank Ha Van Tham ordered that extra interest which was notstated in contracts be paid to all clients who had deposited money at the bank.
From 2013 to 2014, then Director General ofOceanBank Nguyen Minh Thu received money sent from the OceanBank headquartersthrough other people’s accounts at the Vung Tau and Ho Chi Minh City branchesto pay the extra interest to Tu Thanh Nghia and Vo Quang Huy.
The Supreme People’s Procuracy said as thethen leaders of Vietsovpetro, Nghia and Huy decided to deposit the business’money at OceanBank and received the money from Thu. While Huy received andappropriated 5.2 billion VND and 130,000 USD, Nghia took 1.5 billion VND and30,000 USD.
The trial is scheduled to lasttwo days.-VNA
VNA
