Vietnam - Female CEO cheats $867,000 off Japanese partner

Police in Hanoi is hunting for a businesswoman who has appropriated about US$867,000 from her Japanese partner and fled.

35-year-old Dao Thanh Nhi, director of Kinhi Mechanical Co Ltd and deputy general director of Protechno Vietnam, would have been arrested if she had not escaped on Friday, police said.

Nhi, of Hanoi’s Dong Da District, has been indicted on charges of “abusing trust to appropriate assets” after evidence showed that she cheated the Japanese entrepreneur, Sugimoto Hiroyuki, general director of Protechno Vietnam, a joint venture set up by him and Nhi.

Sugimoto, who is also chairman of the management board of the Sugitec Co Ltd in Japan, reported to police that Nhi, the wife of a Japanese friend of his, promised him in 2004 that she would assist him in making investment in Vietnam.

Nhi later asked Sugimoto to join her in buying a land plot of 15,000 square meters in Pho Noi A Industrial park in Hung Yen Province to establish the said joint venture. The Japanese agreed to buy 8,000 square meters and Nhi bought the remaining area.

Nhi later carried out all procedures for setting the joint venture. In 2008, Sugimoto arrived in Vietnam and Nhi showed him a certified copy of the certificate of investment. The Japanese then transferred US$1.1 million to the joint venture’s account to pay for the cost of construction and other expenses.

The joint venture began operating in March 2008, but only three months later, Nhi demanded it be shut down since it had not paid the rental for the land it had leased from Kinhi.

After Sugimoto reported the case to police, Nhi showed them papers with the signatures of Sugimoto to prove that the Japanese had leased the entire land to set up Protechno Vietnam. The Vietnamese woman also presented documents showing Sugimoto has used the money from the joint venture’s account to pay her for his debt.

However, after verification, investigators concluded that all these papers had been forged by Nhi.

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