Vietnam tries former oil executives in widened crackdown
HANOI, Vietnam — A Vietnamese court began a major corruption trial on Monday of 22 defendants, including a former senior Vietnamese Communist Party official and a top oil executive the government is accused of snatching from Germany.
Most of the defendants are current or former senior oil executives, including three other former chairmen of state-owned energy giant PetroVietnam.
The company and the banking sector have been at the centre of an unprecedented crackdown on corruption under the watch of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.
Former Politburo member Dinh La Thang, 57, also a former PetroVietnam chairman, is accused of “deliberately violating state economic management regulations, causing serious consequences” for his role in awarding PetroVietnam’s Construction Joint Stock Co., or PVC, a contract to build a thermoelectric plant without a proper bidding process.