In the past 12 months, government inspectors have conducted about 6,000
inspections and proposed that nearly VND6.5 trillion (US$311 million) involved
in corruption cases be repaid to the State budget, but only VND141 billion, or
2.1 percent, of this has been recovered.
Chief Government Inspector Huynh
Phong Tranh made the statement at yesterday’s meeting of the National
Assembly’s Standing Committee to review performance in corruption prevention
and control.
From August 2011 to August 2012,
police nationwide uncovered and handled 551 corruption cases involving 1,277
defendants. Compared to the August 2010-August 2011 period, the number of cases
and defendants in the past 12 months has increased by 80 and 224, respectively.
Of the 551 cases, only 222, with
469 offenders, have been prosecuted. Currently, 137 cases involving 295
defendants are still being investigated, Tranh said.
In the past 12 months, courts
have heard 167 cases with 338 defendants involved in charges of corruption, of
which serious, very serious and extremely serious cases accounted for 44.1
percent.
When asked why the money
recovered in corruption cases remains such a tiny amount, Tranh explained that
in many cases, the amounts of money or assets involved were unrecoverable, like
in the Vinalines case or others cases involving real estate.
After examining the report, the
National Assembly’s Justice Committee representative said, “There is a high
proportion of cases in which many defendants in corruption cases have been
given sentences lighter than those they should receive, or below the minimum
levels.
“In some localities, the number
of corruption cases in which defendants were given sentences lower than the
minimum imprisonment levels accounted for 80 percent of the total corruption
cases, and the number of cases in which defendants received suspended or light
sentences made up over 50 percent of the total.”
“Large cases turned into small”
This issue must be clearly
reported by the Inspectorate to the NA in its coming meeting, said NA Vice
Chairman Uong Chu Luu. He also emphasized that there have been situations in
which large corruption cases have been “shrunk” deliberately in terms of
seriousness so that defendants involved could been given lighter sentences for
lighter charges.
Meanwhile, Phan Trung Ly,
chairman of the NA’s Law Committee, said, “The actions of anti-corruption
agencies are very weak. The Investigation Department of the Ministry of Public
Security has only discovered 16 cases so far this year. All 63 provinces and
cities have their own anti-corruption police teams, but they have detected only
a small number of corruption cases,” Ly said.
Nguyen Van Giau, chairman of the
NA’s Economic Committee, said the NA should take tougher actions to combat
corruption. “I suggest that the NA adopt a resolution stipulating that leaders
of every State agency must be take responsibility for any corruption cases
discovered in his agency, and any such leader should resign,” Giau said.
Nguyen Van Hien, chairman of the
NA’s Justice Committee, said that inspectors must be held responsible in case
they fail to discover corruption at a certain organization while other agencies
uncover a case after they have left.
In conclusion of the meeting, the
NA’s Standing Committee asked the Government to perfect its report on
anti-corruption activities before submitting it to the NA for consideration.
TUOI TRE
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