Province leader jailed for taking $300,000 bribe to let company mine sand illegally

A former chairman of An Giang Province was sentenced to jail on Wednesday for taking a US$300,000 bribe and allowing a company to mine sand illegally.

The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court awarded Nguyen Thanh Binh a sentence of eight and a half years.


Nguyen Thanh Binh, former chairman of An Giang Province, is escorted by police to a trial in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

The judges said he had directed his subordinates to enable Trung Hau 68 Company to mine sand without going through the bidding process, causing a loss of nearly VND294 billion ($11.47 million) to the province.

The company's chairman, Le Quang Binh, also paid VND961 million to the province's vice chairman, Tran Anh Thu, and VND3.1 billion to Nguyen Viet Tri, director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Binh was sentenced to 13 years in prison for bribery, six years for violating regulations on research, exploration and exploitation of resources and 12 years for money laundering. The 30 years he received is the maximum term in Vietnam after a life sentence.

The An Giang Province people's committee granted Trung Hau 68 a license to mine 300,000 m3 of sand between March 2022 and July 2023.

But the company repeatedly asked to increase the mining volume.

Though it failed to meet the requisite conditions, province leader Binh directed his subordinates to amend the license to allow the company to exploit 1.5 million m3 over two years to supply sand to southern expressway and highway projects.

However, Binh, the company chief, directed his deputies to mine more than 5 million m3 and also leased out the sand mines to other businesses.

With the ill-gotten profits he bought properties in HCMC and some southern provinces and luxury cars such as Mercedes S450 and Lexus 570.


VietBF@ Sưu tập