Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has suspended the head of state-owned shipbuilder Vinashin for massive debts piled up by the group under his stewardship.

The decision was announced by the government office on July 14, two days after the Communist Party’s Inspection Commission decided to transfer the case to the police for criminal investigation.

The 57-year-old chairman of Vinashin (Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group), Pham Thanh Binh, was suspended pending investigation into his suspected wrongdoings, said Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Head of the Government Office.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Hong Truong has been appointed Vinashin chairman, the minister said.

Early this month, the government had reported that the shipbuilder’s debts exceeded VND80 trillion (US$4.2 billion).

Binh, a shipbuilding engineer from Hai Phong City, has been Vinashin General Director since 1996 and held the chairman’s position at the group since August 1998. Since 2003, he has been secretary of the group’s Party Unit.

Prime Minister Dung has ordered that a taskforce be set up to deal with Vinashin’s problems, including restructuring the group to continue developing the shipbuilding industry, managing its assets effectively, limiting the negative impacts on workers, preventing a domino effect on other operations and taking appropriate measures against individuals responsible for the group’s predicament.

On July 5, the Party’s Inspection Commission announced that it had found several key party members including Binh violating Party regulations.

Inspectors said Binh had been irresponsible in using state funds and pushing the company towards bankruptcy. Binh had also appointed his family members to key positions in the company in violation of state regulations, they said.

These violations have caused serious consequences, inspectors said, noting that Binh may have acted out of his own self-interest.

The Inspection Commission also said Vinashin had been dishonest in its financial reporting and had invested aggressively beyond its main business of shipbuilding, causing significant losses to the government budget.

Party inspectors also announced Binh would be placed under the disciplinary process and on July 12, they announced the case would be transferred to the police for investigation because they found indications of criminal violations by Binh and some other individuals in the group.

In a recent report by Tien Phong newspaper, Vinashin CEO Tran Quang Vu said: “We want to apologize to the Party, the government, the public and everyone who put their faith in Vinashin. We have failed to live up to expectations.”

As shipbuilding is a comprehensive industry, comprising many other sectors like steel, machinery and paint, Vinashin had created “an ambitious plan” to build a well-rounded business in order to control quality and cut production costs, said Vu, who took over as CEO on July 1.

“However, we have to admit that we became overindulgent. Besides shipbuilding, which is our core business, we also invested in stocks, real estate and insurance markets.

“Since our business was based on loans, Vinashin faced difficulties when the economic crisis hit the global market, severing the company from its financial plans.”

Vinashin was established in 1996 with a chartered capital of VND100 billion, according to a government report. The group has made great strides over the years, turning Vietnam into one of the strongest shipbuilders in the region.

It was hit hard by the economic downturn with many customers cancelling shipbuilding contracts or delaying payments, the report said.

Gangsters beat up a doctor, broke open doors of a ward and kidnapped a seriously injured patient at a major hospital in Hanoi on Wednesday, with a manager and guards doing nothing to stop them.

Local news website VietNamNet said Thursday that the doctor was beaten because he tried to protect the patient.

Doctor Nguyen Minh Hung of the National Hospital of Endocrinology said a man, severely injujred and having lost a lot of blood, ran up to the hospital asking for help.

At least five gangsters who were after the man beat up Hung when he refused to open doors on the fourth floor so that they could find their victim, Hung said.

They beat him in front of the eyes of two guards and a deputy director of the hospital, whose name has not been released, broke the doors and took the victim away, he said.

Hung said he had earlier called the hospital"s directors, guards, local police and dialled 113 when the gangsters chased the victim to the hospital and frightened many other patients.

The doctor told VietNamNet he was “very angry” about the neglect of the hospital guards and officials.

“Before and after the incident happened, I called director Nguyen Van Tien, who was on duty at that time, many times, but I failed to reach him.

“When I met him directly to report the case, he said “it was a small thing,” Hung said.

As of Thursday afternoon, none of the management officials at the hospital had come to see Hung.

Meanwhile, Tien told VietNamNet that the hospital is considering honoring Hung for his courage.

But it’s “not good” that Hung told the press about the incident without the hospital"s permission, as patients will be scared if the case “is taken seriously,” he added.

The police were investigating the case.

The report did not say if the gangsters were armed.

A South Korean man suspected of raping a seven-year-old Vietnamese girl in Seoul last month has been arrested after 20 days on the run, Yonhap News quoted local police as saying.

The 26-year-old suspect, identified only by his last name, Yang, was nabbed by police Thursday night at a hospital on the resort island of Jeju.

He had come to the hospital seeking treatment for a cut on his arm caused by a razor, Dongdaemun police said.

 
Police put Yang on the wanted list with a five-million-won (US$4,150) reward offered for allegedly raping a Vietnamese child on June 28.

Investigations showed that he found the girl playing alone in the street in Jangan, Seoul, at around 12.30 p.m. before taking her to her apartment where he raped her, newswire Joogang Daily reported.

He fled the scene with some $200 worth of gold rings and 10,000 won ($8.23) in cash, it said.

The girl lives with her parents who came to South Korea five years ago and are expected to acquire Korean citizenship this September, according to the news source.

Two Chinese workers were killed and two were injured in a gas explosion at the Hai Phong Thermo-electric plant Saturday morning.

Fu Fung Wey, 43, was killed instantly. Huang Cao Xun, 39, succumbed to injuries on the way to Hai Phong city hospital.

The injured have not been identified.

Preliminary investigations have shown that the explosion occurred while the men were welding components of a desulfurization system.

Hai Phong Thermo-electric plant opened in December 2009.  Technical problems put the plant on a temporary until last month. Following its re-activation, portions of the plant remained under construction.

Further investigations into the explosion are currently underway.

Vietnam has demanded that South Korea conduct a thorough investigation into the death of a Vietnamese woman that was allegedly murdered by her Korean husband in Busan last week.

The statement was made by a spokeswoman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday.

Thach Thi Hong Ngoc, 20, came to South Korea to marry Jang Do Hyo on June 1. The marriage was brokered by a third party. After just 8 days in the country, Ngoc was found beaten and stabbed to death in her new husband"s home. 

Hyo told police that a ghost had instructed him to kill her during an argument, the Korea Times reported.

After the incident on July 8, South Korean media reported that Ngoc married Hyo via a matchmaking service without knowing he had undergone psychiatric treatment for depression and mental illness 57 times since 2005.

The Vietnamese Embassy in South Korea is cooperating with local agencies in the investigation, spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga told the press.

In the meantime, Pham Thi Anh Tuyet, a counselor from Eulim – the Migrant Women and Multi-cultured Families Center in Busan, said Ngoc"s parents have authorized the center to sue the brokerage firm for not telling them about Hyo’s history of mental problems.

However, Korean police have said the representative of the firm, whose name hasn’t been released, has denied any prior knowledge of Hyo’s mental problems, according to media reports.

On Thursday, Ngoc’s parents had their daughter cremated in Korea. They plan to bring the ash home in Vietnam’s southern province of Tra Vinh Friday.

Border guards in Ha Tinh Province on Thursday night caught a man carrying 106 kilograms of TNT explosive, the biggest TNT trafficking case bust in the province ever.

Nguyen Ngoc Tran, 44, was stopped by police while carrying the payload in three sacks on his motorbike, local news website VietNamNet said Friday.

Tran said he was hired by neighbor Tran Thi Tam, 42, to carry the explosive from the province downtown to Thach Bang Commune, Loc Ha District for VND600,000 (US$31).

Investigators said the explosives were supposed to be sold to fishermen to catch fish at sea.

Ha Tinh police are investigating the case further.

The World Bank and the State Bank of Vietnam signed Thursday a credit of US$100 million for a project to help Vietnam make its public investments more efficient.

The project, called Preparation Technical Assistance Facility Project, is expected to be implemented from October 2010 to October 2015, the Washington-based lender said in a statement.

Funding comes from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s source of funding for low income countries.

Public investment in general, and infrastructure investment in particular, are frequently delayed in Vietnam, the World Bank said in the statement.

It said undisbursed Official Development Assistance was about $11 billion at the end of 2008, and that this could increase if project start-up delays are not substantially reduced.

Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank Country Director for Vietnam said that the project would help accelerate project start-ups as well as disbursement by improving the speed and quality of preparatory work.

This, in turn, would "enable beneficiaries to quickly realize the economic and social benefits from investments supported through the project,” she said.

Construction of Ho Chi Minh City’s first underground car park will start next month, following several delays since the project was initiated seven years ago, the investor said Thursday.

Le Tuan, chairman of Investment Development for Underground Space (IUS), said work on the car park at District 1’s Le Van Tam Park could not begin in March as planned, due to “some paperwork problems.”

Nguyen Van Hiep, deputy director of the HCMC Construction Department, confirmed that the project has been licensed and its construction now depends on IUS. Hiep added that the delays were due to the investor requesting preferential treatment.

The car park was originally scheduled to be completed in 2007.

“The biggest issue now is protecting the park’s flora during construction,” he said, noting that many plants will have to be moved or cut down.

The project, with an investment capital of more than US$100 million, has five floors underground with a combined parking space of 72,000 square meters.

It is expected to accommodate around 2,000 motorbikes, 1,250 cars and 28 trucks and buses, with three entrances on Vo Thi Sau, Hai Ba Trung and Dien Bien Phu streets.

Le Hoang Quan, chairman of the HCMC People’s Committee, said in an interview with Thanh Nien late last month that there are too many vehicles in the city for the existing infrastructure.

The city has also approved another underground car park project at the outdoor stage, Trong Dong, also in District 1.

Police in Hanoi has arrested a man on suspicion of smuggling cars into Vietnam.

Initial investigations showed Ngo Doan Phuc, 33, and his gang imported cars temporarily for export, which imposes low or no tax.

They then would fake documents showing the cars were too old to export to foreign markets and sell them here.

Police have confiscated a Hummer, a Land Rover, a Toyota Prado and a Lexus worth nearly VND6.3 billion (US$330,015) in total.

They were imported from Laos and registered at a traffic police office in the northern province of Bac Giang, according to Hanoi police.

An investigation is currently underway.

Typhoon Conson snapped the anchors on three cargo ships Saturday night, sending them careening into Hai Phong"s s Binh Bridge, Vnexpress reported.

The Vinashin Express 01, the Vinashin Orient were joined under the bridge by the Shinsung Accord, a 17,500-ton South Korean vessel that had docked at the Bach Dang Shipbuilding Industry Corporation for repairs.

Traffic on the suspension bridge has been halted for safety reasons after the crash. As of Sunday morning, a half dozen tug boats had succeeded in dislodging two of the giant ships and Vinashin Orient was dislodged early Monday.

The Vinashin Orient and the Shinsung Accord smashed their cargo cranes as they collided with the bridge, according to media reports. Meanwhile, the rear tower of the Vinashin Express 01 destroyed portions of the bridge fence. The structure also bent and snapped several steel cables.

Binh Bridge was built using funds from Japan’s ODA (official development aid), and opened in May 2005. The suspension bridge is supported by girdles made of steel and concrete.

Typhoon Conson lost steam after making landfall in Vietnam on Saturday evening. However, heavy rains, strong winds have fallen in northern provinces and 5-meter waves pounded the coastline in Nam Dinh province before that.

Conson left at least 39 people dead in the Philippines, according to a Reuters report.

The storm brought wind and rain to the Chinese coastal province of Guangdong, and has halted shipping services and flights from Hainan since Thursday.

A Hanoi court on July 14 sentenced to death a man for beheading and robbing his ex-girlfriend in a “cruel” murder case that has grabbed considerable public attention.

The Hanoi People’s Court also ordered Nguyen Duc Nghia, 26, to pay VND113 million (US$5,931) in compensation to the family of 26-year-old Nguyen Phuong Linh.

Nghia’s girlfriend, 24-year-old Hoang Thi Yen, was given a 15- month suspended sentence and a 30-month probation for not informing the police of his crime.

According to the indictment, Nghia and Linh started a romantic relationship in 2006 and broke up one year later.

On May 4 this year, Nghia asked Linh to meet him at Yen’s apartment on the 11th floor of the G4 building in Cau Giay District.

Yen then was visiting her hometown and had asked Nghia to take care of it in her absence.

The indictment said that after Nghia and Linh had made love, he stabbed her to death. Then he cut off her head and fingers before wrapping her torso in a blanket and stashing it on the building’s rooftop.

After disposing of the body parts in different places, he pawned her motorbike, laptop and mobile phone for money, the court was told.

Nghia was arrested on May 22, one day after police found Linh’s naked, rotting body.

Cold-blooded murder

Calling for the death penalty for Nghia, the prosecution said he deserved “to be eliminated from society” for his gruesome crime.

Rejecting the notion that this was not a premeditated crime, the prosecution noted that the defendant had taken time to prepare the knife and had stabbed the unaware victim from behind.

Displaying no sign of nerves, he cut off her head and fingers and discarded them later, prosecutors said. Some reports said Nghia took a bus to the northern Quang Ninh Province and disposed of her body parts in a river there.

“Such acts show that Nghia is a cold-blooded murderer,” the prosecution said.

At the hearing, prosecutors also rejected Nghia’s argument that he had killed Linh out of jealousy.

Nghia told the court that he had not stabbed Linh as she was combing her hair in front of a mirror after they made love as he first told the police, but two hours later.

Linh had told him she did not have a boyfriend, but that day she refused to answer a call which she said was from her new boyfriend who lived far away, Nghia said.

“Linh also said she’d met me because she was lonely and wanted to have sex,” he said, adding that this had made him angry. They had an argument and he stabbed her, Nghia said.

But investigators have confirmed there is no evidence to support Nghia’s jealousy claims.

Nghia also denied that the murder was motivated by the desire to steal her property, claiming instead that he had pawned them because he didn’t know where to hide them.

However, prosecutors pointed out that Nghia could have gotten rid of Linh’s mobile phone anywhere, not necessarily a pawnshop.

“It showed that he planned to steal Linh’s property before killing her,” they asserted.

After explaining his acts, Nghia, who was unemployed at the time of the murder, pleaded guilty to killing and robbing Linh before apologizing to her family, Yen and his parents.

Crying, he said he wouldn’t lodge an appeal, as “death isn’t enough to make up for the crime I have committed.”

Clamping down on illegal marriage brokers who send Vietnamese brides overseas would be difficult, a government spokeswoman said Thursday after a mentally-ill South Korean killed his new bride.

The issue “has been considered very seriously by the authorities in Vietnam but I think that it is not easy to identify which marriage is unlawfully brokered”, Nguyen Phuong Nga, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, told reporters.

A 20-year-old Vietnamese woman was killed by her 47-year-old South Korean husband earlier this month eight days after she arrived in South Korea.

The man turned himself in and told police he had heard a “ghost’s voice” urging him to kill the bride when they quarreled. He had been treated 57 times for schizophrenia since July 2005, police said.

The couple met through a marriage agency, the VietnamNet online news service reported.

More than 40,000 Vietnamese women have married South Korean men and immigrated to South Korea, Pham Tien Van, Hanoi’s ambassador to Seoul, said last October in an interview with South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

The report did not say how many years the 40,000 figure covers, but a rising number of Vietnamese-South Korean marriages have occurred in the last few years.

About 90 percent of the weddings between South Koreans and Vietnamese are arranged by marriage brokers who are illegal in Vietnam.

Local media periodically carry reports about police raids on the illegal operators.

South Korea’s justice ministry announced a raft of measures to curb abuse of foreign brides after the murder.

Le Van Thanh, chief forest ranger in Huong Hoa District said that a number of 12-24 seat vehicles have used the ruse slip past guards at the Lao Bao border crossing.

The wood is being trafficked to Dong Ha, a major city in the Quang Tri Province to be sold on black markets.

The rangers have successfully caught four of the vehicles.

Some had local plates and others originated from nearby Thua Thien-Hue. The traffickers had removed the seats from all of the vehicles, Thanh said. The ranger added that he and his men were working against a network of lookouts posted along the route to alert timber smugglers of their presence.
 

The rangers are asking for help from police and concerned citizens.

In related news, forest rangers in the south central province of Phu Yen stopped a truck on Saturday containing nine cubic meters of wood that is banned from logging, trade and transport.

The driver managed to escape.