Kids lied about torture, Youth Union affirms
The police have no reason to believe that the four injured children who fled to Ho Chi Minh City from an orphanage in Dong Nai last month were tortured, the Dong Nai Province Youth Union told the media Tuesday.
They found no evidence that Le Thi Thanh Lan, deputy chief of the Dong Nai Shelter, and her husband Le An Thanh had abused Nguyen Van Be Hai, 13, Diep Tuan Khoa, six, Le Gia Huy, five, and Diep Hieu Trung, four, it said.
Hai, the oldest boy, disliked Lan because she kept yelling at him for being too mischievous and managed to talk the others into running away, the police had said earlier.
The injuries on the kids’ bodies were not the result of torture but of a fall they had suffered when scaling the Shelter’s two-meter wall in the dark to escape, they had said.
Khoa and Trung, who are brothers, have been sent back to their home to live with their grandmother while the two others have been sent to another shelter in nearby Bien Hoa city.
The four were found wandering on HCMC’s Hung Vuong Street November 8 with multiple bruises on their bodies.
The local police took them to the HCMC Social Sponsoring Center where they claimed to have run away from the Dong Nai Shelter, a charity center for orphaned and abandoned children.
Hai told the police they had been tortured by Lan and Thanh.
Vietnamese-Australian gets 7 years for robbing taxi
Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court on Tuesday sentenced a Vietnamese-Australian drug addict to 7 years in prison for robbing a taxi to get money for heroin.
On May 4, 2010, after running away while en route to a rehab center in Binh Thuan province, Tran Van Vuong, 24, caught a taxi in Ho Chi Minh City, and kicked the driver out at a crossroad in Phu Nhuan District.
He then drove the car but crashed into a motorcycle. The taxi driver and people nearby chased after and handed him over to the police.
Police said he committed the robbery after failing to persuade the taxi driver to buy his watch for VND2 million (US$102).
He lacked money to buy heroin, they said.
Vuong and his family settled down in Australia when he was four. He dropped out of school when he entered the 10th grade and at 19, was sentenced to 6 years in jail by Australian authorities for drug-related crimes.
He relapsed into drug addiction upon being released. In April 2010, his parents brought him back to Vietnam for rehab.
One ton of toxic beef tripe found in Dong Nai
For illustration purposesOver 1 ton of beef tripe meant as food were found soaked in toxic cleansing chemicals in the Dong Nai southern province Tuesday – an illegal method to bleach the internal organs and keep them fresh and crispy.
Police also found 60 kilos of chemical-tainted tripe being stored in four tanks at Nguyen Van Ty’s house in Lo Duc Hamlet, No. 3 Ho Nai Commune, Trang Bom District.
25 kilos of borax, 30 kilos of alum, 3 kilos of dye chemicals, and 20 litters of detergent used for bleaching the tripe were too seized.
Ty could not provide proof of the food’s origin, failed to hand out any working permit nor certificate of hygiene or food safety.
Ty said he put the tripe into the chemical reservoirs, soaked them in borax before freezing and selling them to bars in Bien Hoa city and in Trang Bom District.
Local environmental police have fined him and suspended the harmful business.
Ex-ministry official gets life sentence for fraud
Nguyen Thanh Ha at the trialThe Hanoi People’s Court Tuesday sentenced a former foreign ministry official to life imprisonment for forging documents to trick people into believing he can lend them money and swindling them out of VND8 billion (US$400,000).
Nguyen Thanh Ha, 52, currently director of Thanh Ha Limited Company in Hanoi, was arrested at a hotel in March 2009 while receiving $10,000 from two business executives.
The police seized some documents in English from him which contained false claims that his company had won bids for multi-million-dollar projects abroad and forged signatures of Vietnamese and foreign diplomats.
Ha promised his “clients” loans on easy terms from his overseas funds, the police said.
He had wangled $400,000 from nine business people in Hanoi and Ha Nam, Quang Ninh, and Khanh Hoa Provinces.
Ha used to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hanoi before he resigned and set up a business.
Hanoi police bust fake vodka production ring
Hanoi police discovered a production line that makes fake homemade vodka during their raid to a local wine company Monday.
The police seized 2,520 bottles of fake vodka from a truck driven by Nguyen Dinh Chien, who confessed to the police he was ordered to transport the wine by the director of Zuso International Joint Stock Company based in Ngoc Son Industrial Zone.
Based on his testimony, the police stormed into the factory and discovered the production line of fake vodka bottles branded as “Hanoi vodka” – a renowned brandname of Hanoi Liquor Joint Stock Company.
The factory is specialized in making Stroka, a vodka brandname, in a joint venture with Germany’s Friedrich Albert von Döhle Group and at the same time producing fake “Hanoi vodka.”
The fake vodka is made mostly at night and distributed to other provinces the following morning.
The company has made dozens of thousands of fake “Hanoi vodka” bottles, according to the police.
They also seized hundreds of fake anti-counterfeit stamps and thousands of genuine empty “Hanoi vodka” bottles that the company had collected for the production.
The batch was intended to be sold to remote areas in the upcoming Tet (lunar new year).
The police are investigating.
Can Tho center to counsel locals marrying foreigners
Thach Thi Hoang Ngoc was killed by her Korean husbandThe southern city of Can Tho has set up a center for helping Vietnamese women marrying foreigners learn about their future husbands’ families and consulting on procedures and legal issues.
The center, opened in Ninh Kieu District Monday, will cooperate with South Korean representative offices in Vietnam this year to organize conferences and offer counseling.
Brokering marriages between locals and foreigners is illegal in Vietnam but the government allows centers like this to offer counseling to women wishing to marry foreigners.
Last month Ho Chi Minh City police detained three Korean men after catching them red-handed selecting brides from a lineup of 13 young women.
The Koreans admitted to hiring a Vietnamese broker to get the women and had promised to pay him US$3,500 for each bride selected.
There has been a spate of incidents in which Vietnamese women were ill-treated abroad. Last year a 47-year-old Korean man was arrested for killing his 20-year-old Vietnamese wife just a week after their marriage.
Another Agribank official arrested in loan scam
The Ho Chi Minh City police arrested Monday a deputy director in the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam (Agribank) who was allegedly the kingpin in the loan fraud that has caused losses of billions of dong.
They said that in April 2009 Nguyen Huu Long, deputy director of the bank’s branch No. 3 in District 3, granted a loan of VND39 billion (US$2 million) for Xuan Lan Services Limited Company, which mortgaged a house in Tan Phu District.
But when the company failed to repay at the end of 12 months, he secured a loan of VND40 billion loan for Trong Bang Trade and Services Limited Company based in District 11, and used the money to pay off the earlier loan.
He will be charged with “violating loan regulations.”
Last month the police had arrested two of Long’s subordinates, Dao Phuong The, chief of the branch’s business planning office, and Huynh Trung Hieu, credit officer.
They said the two knew that the same house was used as security for the second loan but ignored it.
Shockingly, the house papers were found to be forged.
Hieu was also charged with not verifying the financial status of the first firm, Xuan Lan, which had become at the time it got the loan.
As for Trong Bang, it used a fake steel trading contract to get the loan.
The officials said they were ordered to grant the loans by Long.
The police are investigating.
Fisherman swaps endangered green turtle for $128
Aquatic resources officials in the central Nghe An Province released an endangered green turtle into the sea Monday following prolonged but successful negotiations with the fisherman who caught it last week.
Le Tien Lieu of Quynh Luu District had netted the 70-kilogram reptile while fishing off the coast of Quynh Phuong Commune and the local Department for Protection of Aquatic Resources said it paid him VND2.5 million (US$128) for the release.
The green turtle (Chelonia mydas) is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
It is among five species of marine turtles found in Vietnamese waters, the others being the leatherback, hawksbill, loggerhead, and Olive Ridley.
The largest nesting site for green turtles in the country is at Con Dao National Park on the island of the same name.
Vietnam presents insignia to WHO expert
The Vietnamese Ministry of Health has awarded the insignia ‘For the People’s Health’ to Dr. Nicole Smith, epidemiologist from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Vietnam.
Speaking at the award ceremony, which was held on January 11 in Hanoi, Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan said, “This is the most notable award that the Ministry of Health in Vietnam can give to an individual who has outstandingly contributed to the health care of the Vietnamese people.”
Dr Nicole Smith has worked in Vietnam since 2007, firstly as an epidemiologist in communicable diseases and then as a team leader from the ‘Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response Team’.
While working in Vietnam, Dr Nicole Smith has made many remarkable contributions regarding communicable diseases. In particularly, those activities relating to pandemic prevention and control, and the pandemic A (H1N1) response to this virus within Vietnam.
As an epidemiologist from the WHO in Vietnam, Dr Nicole Smith has coordinated with other international agencies such as: FAO, UNICEF, USAID, USCDC, ADB, WB, and the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development, in order to implement strategies relating to pandemic prevention and control.
Mr. Huan congratulated Dr Nicole Smith, and expressed his appreciation to the WHO and other international organizations for their support of Vietnam’s health sector.
Dr. Smith said, “I am inspired by your commitment, your dedication, and your passion for improving the public health for all its citizens of Vietnam”. She expressed her thanks to everyone in Hanoi and said that now this city has become her home.
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