Vietnam court jails soft drinks tycoon in $40 million scam case

Vietnam's top soft drinks tycoon was jailed for eight years on Thursday in a $40 million fraud case -- the latest high-profile business figure snared in the country's sweeping crackdown on corruption.

The communist nation's wide-ranging campaign to wipe out endemic graft has seen more than 4,400 people charged with criminal offences, including officials and senior business figures.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City found Tran Qui Thanh and his two daughters guilty of scamming investors over loans issued in 2019 and 2020.

Thanh, the 71-year-old chairman of beverage group Tan Hiep Phat, was ruled to have masterminded scams to appropriate assets put up as collateral against loans, state media reported.

Even when the borrowers paid back the money with interest, Thanh would refuse to give back the assets on various pretexts, including claiming they had forfeited their repurchase rights due to contract breaches.

The court sentenced Thanh's 43-year-old daughter Tran Uyen Phuong, the company's deputy CEO, to four years in jail.

Younger daughter Tran Ngoc Bich, 40, was given a suspended three-year jail sentence.

Tan Hiep Phat is one of Vietnam's biggest beverage companies, known for its range of bottled tea and energy drinks.

In his final words before court, Thanh said he regretted what happened and was ready to take responsibility.

"I would like to be given leniency, handing me the chance to come back to society soon for my continued work and devotion," Thanh was quoted as saying.

Some of Vietnam's most successful business leaders have been snared in the graft purge.

In one of the biggest fraud cases in history, property tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced to death earlier this month for masterminding a swindle that has caused losses estimated at $27 billion.

Facing justice with Lan were 85 others, including senior banking officials, being sentenced on charges ranging from bribery and power abuse to appropriation and violations of banking law.

In March, a Hanoi court gave luxury property tycoon Do Anh Dung eight years in prison for cheating thousands of investors in a $355 million bond scam.

State media reported that Dung and his son, who was jailed for three years, have already repaid the $355 million.

Vietnam tycoon sentenced to death in $12.5-B fraud case

Agence France-Presse

'Rice ATM' feeds Vietnam's poor during lockdown

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - A Vietnamese entrepreneur in Ho Chi Minh City has invented a 24/7 automatic dispensing machine providing free rice for people out of work following an ongoing nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Vietnam has reported 262 COVID-19 cases, and no deaths so far, but as a result of a 15-day social distancing program that began on March 31 many small businesses have been shuttered and thousands of people temporarily laid off from work.

Nguyen Thi Ly's husband was among those who have lost their job.

"This rice ATM has been helpful. With this one bag of rice, we can have enough for one day," said the 34-year-old mother of three children. "Now, we only need other food. Our neighbors sometimes gave us some leftover food, or we have instant noodles."



The machine distributes a 1.5kg (3.3lb) bagful of rice from a small silo to waiting workers, many of whom are street sellers or people who earned a living from cash-in-hand jobs like housekeeping or selling lottery tickets.

Hoang Tuan Anh, the businessman behind the idea, had initially donated a batch of smart doorbells to hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City before turning his technological expertise to food distribution.

Similar "rice ATMs" have been set up in other big cities like Hanoi, Hue and Danang, according to state media.

Employees monitoring the rice ATM declined to comment, but Anh told state media he wanted people to feel they still had access to food and resources, despite the current economic difficulties they found themselves in.

"I refer to this machine as a 'rice ATM' because people can withdraw rice from it, assured that there are still good people out there who want to give them a second chance," he said.

While many in the Communist-ruled country can rely on a social safety-net, and the government has introduced a stimulus package designed to help society’s most vulnerable, some people living on the margin, like Ly and her family, have not received enough support.

"I read about this rice ATM on the internet. I came to check it out, and couldn’t believe it came out for real. I really hope the sponsors would keep doing this until the end of the pandemic," said Ly, adding that her family's biggest problem was now paying their rent.

-reuters-

All sewn up? Vietnam garment makers face hitches in lucrative EU trade deal

HO CHI MINH CITY - For Tran Nhu Tung, Vietnam's newly signed free trade deal with the European Union presents both huge opportunity, and a logistical headache.

The vice chairman of Thanh Cong Textile Garment Investment Trading (TCM) in Ho Chi Minh City is planning a rapid expansion in anticipation of the influx of orders the tariff-slashing EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) promises to bring.

"The EVFTA is the game changer that will pave the way for Vietnamese garments to dominate the European market," Tung said amid the clack of thousands of sewing machines in the metal-roofed factory on the outskirts of Vietnam's commercial centre.

Analysts say garments, worth around 10 percent of Vietnam's exports and currently subject to EU tariffs of around 9 percent, will be by far the biggest beneficiary of the EVFTA finalized last month.

The EU is already Vietnam's second largest garment market after the United States, accounting for 15 percent of the country's total garment exports last year, Vietnam Customs data shows.

Tung expects orders at his factory, which produces company uniforms and sportswear, to increase by at least 15% once the EVFTA, which will reduce duties on nearly half of all garment products to zero, is ratified by the European Parliament.

Vietnam, backed by more than a dozen free trade agreements, has emerged as a key link in the global manufacturing supply chain.

Last December, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told a Hanoi business forum that Vietnam had become "one of the world's big factories".

That capacity, however, is being tested by growing demand - both from the EVFTA and the global disruption of trade caused by the U.S.-China trade war which has seen some manufacturing shift from China to Vietnam and other nearby countries.

Staff shortages have already started to manifest in Vietnam's garment industry, where the vast majority of manufacturers are focused on the labor-intensive sewing and cutting process which makes the Southeast Asian country a popular outsourcing destination for foreign fashion companies.

Low pay and long hours are making it hard to meet the new factories' growing demand for workers, which has increased by 7% since 2018, according to Ho Chi Minh City-based recruitment firm Navigos Search.

"This industry always lacks human resources especially high-level employees who have specialized skills," Navigos managing director Mai Nguyen told Reuters.

For TCM's Tung, who is poised to open a new dyeing plant to keep up with orders, this means embarking on the difficult task of finding a chemical engineer who can lead his next operation.

"Finding people to operate dyeing or weaving machines is easy. They are workers, and we can train them," said Tung. "But finding experienced chemical engineers with a thorough knowledge of chemistry and dyeing is rare".

"I can count them on one hand," Tung added.

SEW WHAT?

The EVFTA presents another challenge for Vietnam's garment industry: Strict rules on the country of origin for materials - or the "double transformation" of goods.

For manufacturers like Tung, this means both the textile and the finished product itself should be Vietnamese or from a country with which the EU already has a free trade agreement in order to be tariff-free.

That's in part because of strong lobbying from European manufacturers who are already struggling against cheap imports from the likes of China.

At a 2013 hearing, European garment manufacturers expressed concern that an FTA with Hanoi could pave the way for cheap Chinese textiles to enter the European market after being transformed into garments in Vietnam.

Italian textile manufacturers and the European Apparel and Textile Confederation (Euratex) acted during the negotiations to prevent Chinese products that had undergone a finishing process in Vietnam from entering the EU without duties.

They also fought to delay the removal of duties for a certain period of time after signing the deal to prevent a sudden flood of Vietnamese products into the European market.

"In conclusion, considering the starting conditions, we were able to contain any damage," Sistema Moda Italia, the federation of Italian textile and fashion manufacturers, said in a statement.

Currently, nearly 70 percent of the raw materials used in Vietnamese garment manufacturing are sourced from overseas, especially China, according to official data. Clothing makers in Vietnam say few can afford the expensive process of producing their own raw materials.

"We have no intention of investing in dyeing ... It's capital-intensive and requires highly-skilled workers to operate," the owner of a small Ho Chi Minh-based factory of around 800 employees told Reuters.

"Importing is cheaper, simpler and faster for small firms like us," said the factory owner, who declined to be identified.

The factory, tucked in an industrial zone about 20km (12 miles) from the city center, produces mostly women's apparel and says Germany is its largest export market.

"The issue of 'point of origin' is important for us. We are considering importing materials from South Korea, which has already established free trade relations with the EU, instead of from China," the owner said.

"The higher costs mean less profit for us, but it's the best alternative way we can think of at the moment." (Reporting by Phuong Nguyen. Additional reporting by Khanh Vu in Hanoi, Claudia Cristoferi in Milan and Sonya Dowsett in Madrid. Editing by James Pearson and Lincoln Feast.)

source: news.abs-cbn.com