A court in Vietnam on Friday sentenced three company executives to death for embezzlement, while four other accomplices received life in prison for the financial scheme.
Death sentences were given to Vu Quoc Hao, Nguyen Minh Tuan and Hoang Loc for stealing 6.2 million dollars from the state-owned Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam (Agribank).
Hao, a former director general of Agribank Financial Leasing Company No 2 (ALC II) – a branch of Agribank – established a company called Cat Long Hai with Tuan, who served as its chairman, according to the indictment considered by the Ho Chi Minh City court.
Cat Long Hai was set up with the purpose of appropriating money from ALC II, the document said.
Cat Long Hai bought old diving equipment and ships for a price of 4,700 dollars from a Japanese seller. It then asked Loc, who was the chief executive of the Vietnam Assessment and Inspection JSC company, to create fake documents inflating the price of the 30-year-old ships to 6.2 million dollars.
Cat Long Hai then sold the ships to ALC II, where Hao was serving as its director general. Hao approved the deal and paid Cat Long Hai its full asking price.
The money was divided among the three men and eight other people who helped execute the deal. Hao used the 3.7 million dollars he received to buy nearly 90,000 square meters of land to build a farm.
The three executives deserved death sentences because their actions caused a significant loss to Agribank, the court found.
Of the eight accomplices, four received life in prison and four were given sentences ranging from 15 to 20 years.
GNA
