Corruption is Everywhere > Tycoon sentenced to Death, hundreds prosecuted or fired in Viet Nam

 

Vietnam tycoon receives death sentence

in fraud case

By Khanh Vu  Reuters

Posted April 11, 2024 7:15 am

 3 min read

Business woman Truong My Lan attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP

A court in Vietnam handed the death sentence on Thursday to real estate tycoon Truong My Lan for her role in a 304-trillion-dong (US$12.5-billion) financial fraud, the country’s biggest on record, state media said.

Her trial, begun on March 5 and ending earlier than planned, was one dramatic result of a campaign against corruption that the leader of the ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, has pledged for years to stamp out.

Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules at the end of a trial in the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, state media said.

“We will keep fighting to see what we can do,” a family member told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Before the verdict he had said Lan would appeal against the sentence.

Lan had pleaded not-guilty to the embezzlement and bribery charges, Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of Lan’s lawyers told Reuters.

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“Of course she will appeal the verdict,” he added noting she was sentenced to death for the embezzlement charge and to 20 years each for the other two charges of bribery and violations of banking regulations.

Vietnam imposes the death penalty mostly over violent offenses but also for economic crimes. Human rights groups say it has executed hundreds of convicts in recent years, mainly by lethal injection.

The Thanh Nien newspaper said 84 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from probation for three years to life imprisonment. Among them are Lan’s husband, Eric Chu, a businessman from Hong Kong, who was sentenced to nine years in jail, and her niece who got 17 years.

From perfumes to high finance

Lan started as a cosmetics trader at the central market in Ho Chi Minh City, helping out her mother, she told judges during the trial, according to state media.

She later founded her real estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the same year when she got married, according to state media.

She was found guilty, with her accomplices of siphoning off more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders, according to investigators.

From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits triggered by Lan’s arrest, she appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies, investigators said.

“The defendant’s actions not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also put SCB under scrutiny, eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State,” state newspaper VnExpress cited the jury as saying.

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The bank is currently propped up by the central bank and faces a complex restructuring under which authorities are trying to establish the legal status of hundreds of assets which were used as collateral for loans and bonds issued by VTP. The bonds alone are worth US$1.2 billion.

Some of the assets are high-end properties but many others are unfinished projects.

Before her fall from grace, she had played a key role in Vietnam’s financial world, getting involved in the previous rescue of troubled SCB more than a decade before she contributed to the bank’s new crisis.

She was found guilty of having bribed officials to persuade the authorities to look away, including paying $5.2 million to a senior central bank inspector, Do Thi Nhan, who was sentenced to life in prison.

Vietnam’s graft crackdown, dubbed “Blazing Furnace”, has seen hundreds of senior state officials and high-profile business executives prosecuted or forced to step down.

Corruption is so widespread that in some provinces many people say they pay bribes just to obtain medical services in public hospitals, according to a recent survey by the U.N. Development Programme and other organisations.

–Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Peter Graff

Atheist Oncologist Returns to Faith While Treating Cancer Patients

..

Atheist Oncologist Returns to Faith While Treating Cancer Patients:

Science Proves the Existence of Higher Power

BY MARINA ZHANG TIME

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 

Dr. Stephen Iacoboni is part of the baby boomer generation. Born in 1952, he came of age during the 1960s when the country was living in the bubble of the ideal American Dream.

“I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and I was very faithful,” said Iacoboni, “but there are some inherent contradictions with Christianity, and when you’re young and idealistic, you don’t understand that humans are imperfect, and so you blame them for things that are just part of being a frail human with faults.”

Iacoboni’s disillusionment came in the early 70s, when the societal problems festering in America’s inner cities rose to the surface with civil rights protests and anti-war movements against the Vietnam War.

Anti-war demonstrators, wearing black armbands, fill the steps of the United States Capitol Building

and hold hands on the day of the National Moratorium in Washington D.C., to protest against the

continuing war in Vietnam, on Oct. 15, 1969. (AFP/Getty Images)

“I was raised to be patriotic and believed that everyone was equal; I became a young adult and [realized that] people of color don’t have the same rights and [we have been] slaughtering innocent people in Southeast Asia [in the Vietnam War],” Iacoboni told The Epoch Times during a phone call.

The United States withdrew from Vietnam once the casualties were too much for the country to bear.

In the aftermath of the lost war, Christians, who mostly held conservative views were blamed for the anti-communist policies that led to the United States’s eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War. This included the mounting casualties, traumatized veterans, and stories of brutal killings by the U.S. military upon the Vietnamese civilians.

Republicans are very good at associating their policies with Christian ideals, as if God wanted America to go to war in Viet Nam. Only the weapons manufacturers and their investors really wanted to go to war. This association is what has allowed Democrats to come out full force against anything Christian.

While Christians faced attack in the public forum for pushing the war agenda, modern science was spouting exciting new discoveries, framed in narratives that denied the existence of a higher being.

There is much more on this article in the Epoch Times. It is well worth the read.

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Bayer Stock Sinks 12% After Court Rules Weed Killer It Bought from Monsanto Caused Cancer

Why Bayer, primarily a pharmaceutical company, bought Monsanto, an agrochemical company known for making Roundup and Agent Orange, is beyond my imagination. Agent Orange produced dreadful famine in Viet Nam and many horrible diseases in the people and in the soldiers who encountered it. 

Bayer's website makes this astonishing claim:

We exist to help people thrive - Advancing health and nutrition is what we do best and care about most.

© Global Look Press / Sven Hoppe

Bayer shares plunged more than 12 percent after a second US jury ruled that glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer causes cancer. It was a huge blow to the German pharmaceutical giant which bought US agrochemical firm Monsanto.

The stock drop during Wednesday morning trading on the Frankfurt exchange wiped out almost $8 billion from Bayer's market value.

The unanimous decision by a jury in San Francisco federal court followed another ruling made in August in California. Back then, the biotechnology corporation was ordered to pay $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages over the case of a school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, whose cancer was allegedly caused due to years of using glyphosate-based Roundup.

The latest verdict was not a finding of Bayer’s liability for the cancer of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. The trial is expected to proceed to the next phase, beginning on Wednesday, with the jury to determine the liability and damages in the case.

Bayer, which specializes in producing pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, agricultural chemicals and biotechnology products, inherited the legal battles with its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, the US' leading producer of genetically engineered crops. Bayer may potentially face thousands of similar lawsuits in the US alone.

However, the German company has denied claims that glyphosate or Roundup causes cancer and said it was disappointed with the jury’s decision.

“We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsanto’s conduct has been appropriate and the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardeman’s cancer,” Bayer said in a statement.

Good luck with that! I think you paid a fortune for a big liability.

US Troops Use White Phosphorus in Iraq to ‘Obscure’ Kurdish Forces – Newspaper

Caution: this report comes from RT which may not be entirely unbiased

© Reuters

The US forces are reportedly using white phosphorus munitions against Islamist militants in Iraq, despite widespread perception of the weapon as indiscriminate and able to cause horrific injuries to civilians.

Images posted on a Pentagon-run public affairs website Dvids show a US Army artillery unit firing white phosphorus munitions in Iraq, identified by the Washington Post as M825A1 155mm shells. 

The M825A1 shells are generally used to create a smokescreen lasting for up to 10 minutes, or make signals and markings for friendly troops. But when used indiscriminately in civilian-populated areas, white phosphorus munitions can cause severe burns.

“Coalition forces use these rounds with caution and always in accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict,” Colonel Joseph Scrocca, public affairs director for the US-led coalition, told the newspaper in an emailed statement on Wednesday.


© 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson / dvidshub.net

“When M825A1 rounds are employed, they are done so in areas free of civilians and never against enemy forces,” he said, adding that the shells are being used for “screening and signaling” only.

However, on Thursday spokesman for the US-led coalition in Iraq Air Force Colonel John Dorrian somewhat revised Scrocca’s statement, claiming that the troops take “all reasonable precautions to minimize the risk of incidental injury to non-combatants and damage to civilian structures.”


© 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson / dvidshub.net

Dorrian refused to elaborate on whether the US military have used white phosphorus shells against enemy forces, telling the Washington Post that the munitions had been “used generally for the circumstances which I described.”

He added that the image posted on Dvids has allegedly been taken during a US operation to support Kurdish fighters’ advance with artillery fire.


© 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson / dvidshub.net

The operation, called Evergreen II, was focused on helping the Kurds secure the Gwer River Bridge, near the northern Iraqi town of Gwer, and the white phosphorus shells have been deployed to “obscure” Kurdish fighters’ offensive.

Evergreen II - does that mean white phosphorus is environmentally friendly? Haven't we been here before, with napalm? Haven't we seen the naked Kim Phuc running down the street with her arms outstretched screaming in pain from the napalm burning her body?

I'm astonished to think that after Viet Nam, someone would go out and invent a weapon that is exponentially more painful and deadly than napalm. But they are not intended for use against soldiers or civilians, you say. Well, I don't think napalm was intended for use against soldiers or civilians, but it was indeed used for such. And it's not as though militaries ever make a mistake and 'accidentally' bomb civilian targets, like hospitals, friendly combatants, or thousands of civilians in Aleppo and other cities in Syria and Iraq. 

People who invent such evil methods of torturing and killing people will have a lot to account for when they stand before Jesus Christ.

Although widely-used by some militaries, the legality of the white phosphorus munitions remains questionable. Many weapons experts and rights groups believe that the weapon is indiscriminate in nature and extremely dangerous for civilians.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International said that the weapon has deliberately been used by the Saudis against Yemeni Houthi rebels. In 2014, HRW alleged that the Ukrainian Army deployed “exceptionally cruel” incendiary weapons, including white phosphorus, against anti-Kiev rebels defending the eastern city of Donetsk. 

“When white phosphorus is used in attacks in areas containing concentrations of civilians and civilian objects, it will indiscriminately start fires over a wide area,” Mark Hiznay, associate arms director at HRW, told the newspaper.

“US and Iraqi forces should refrain from using white phosphorus in urban areas like Mosul, because whatever tactical military advantage is gained at the time of use, it will be far outweighed by the stigma created by horrific burns to civilian victims.”

In 2009, HRW called on NATO forces in Afghanistan to immediately release the results of their inquiry into deadly incident in which an eight-year-old girl in Kapisa province has been burned by white phosphorus munitions.

The girl died hours after the shelling because of several burn wounds on her face and neck. NATO forces denied use of white phosphorus munitions in the area and claimed that is was Taliban that may have fired the shells, but have not provided any evidence for their claims.

Japan Doesn't Like Its WWII History, So It's Changing It

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News
 From the section Asia

Former comfort woman Lee Ok Seon says she was "kidnapped"

Seventy years after the end of World War Two, the voices of revisionism in Japan are growing stronger and moving into the mainstream, particularly on the issue of comfort women, who were women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war.

One of the most eloquent voices of revisionism is Toshio Tamogami.

Mr Tamogami is well-educated, knowledgeable and, when I meet him, exquisitely polite. The former chief of staff of Japan's air force believes in a version of Japanese history that is deeply at odds with much of the rest of the world.

But it is increasingly popular among young Japanese, tired of being told they must keep apologising to China and Korea.

Last year Mr Tamogami ran for governor of Tokyo. He came fourth, with 600,000 votes. Most strikingly, among young voters aged 20 to 30 he got nearly a quarter of the votes cast.

"As a defeated nation we only teach the history forced on us by the victors," he says. "To be an independent nation again we must move away from the history imposed on us. We should take back our true history that we can be proud of."

In this "true" history of the 20th Century that Mr Tamogami talks of, Japan was not the aggressor, but the liberator. Japanese soldiers fought valiantly to expel the hated white imperialists who had subjugated Asian peoples for 200 years.

It is a proud history, where Japan, alone in Asia, was capable of taking on and defeating the European oppressors. It is also a version of history that has no room for the Japanese committing atrocities against fellow Asians.

Mr Tamogami believes that Japan did not invade the Korean Peninsula, but rather "invested in Korea and also in Taiwan and Manchuria".

I ask him about the invasion of China in 1937 and the massacre of civilians in the capital Nanjing. Surely that was naked aggression?

"I can declare that there was no Nanjing Massacre," he says, claiming there were "no eyewitnesses" of Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese civilians. Maybe because they were all dead.

Former chief of Japan's air forces, Toshio Tamogami, says that stories of
atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre in the 1930s are "lies and fabrication"

It is when I ask him about the issue of Korean comfort women that Mr Tamogami's denials are most indignant.

He declares it "another fabrication", saying: "If this is true, how many soldiers had to be mobilised to forcibly drag those women away? And those Korean men were just watching their women taken away by force? Were Korean men all cowards?"

Although they may not say it as loudly and as bluntly as Mr Tamogami, this is a version of history that is widely believed by many of Japan's nationalists.

Earlier this year at a joint session of the US Congress in Washington DC, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed deep sorrow for the suffering caused by Japan during WW2.

Mr Abe does not deny there were Korean women serving as comfort women near the frontlines in China and South East Asia.

But he has repeatedly said there is no evidence these women were coerced or that the Japanese military was involved in their recruitment and confinement. The implication is the women were prostitutes.

This is a very murky area. Girls from poor families have been sold in to prostitution in Japan, Korea and China for centuries, and the practice was certainly still going on in the 1930s and 1940s. No kidding! It's still going on today!

But that does not absolve the Japanese military from responsibility.

'We were kidnapped'

In a quiet valley an hour's drive from Seoul there is a small care home called the House of Sharing. This is where some of the last surviving comfort women are cared for in their old age. There are only ten left here now.

Lee Ok Seon is a tiny 88-year-old with thick white curly hair and badly-fitting false teeth. She chuckles as I try to cajole her to speak to me in Chinese.

Ms Lee spent 65 years in China, and only returned to South Korea 15 years ago.

She was born in the port city of Busan on the southern tip of modern day South Korea. Her family was poor and she was sent out to work at the age of 14.

"I had to start work as a housekeeper for another family at a young age. It was at that time I was out on the street one day… that's how I got kidnapped," she says.

She said two men grabbed her and put her on a train. "By the time we arrived I realised we had crossed the border into China. I was sent to a place where there were already several comfort women.

"I wonder why they called us comfort women. We didn't go by our own accord, we were kidnapped. I was forced to have sex with many men each day."

South Korean elderly women (yellow vests), who served as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II, hug the statue of a South Korean teenage girl in traditional costume called the 'peace monument' during the 1,000th weekly protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on 14 December 2011.

Ms Lee spent three years in the brothel close to a Japanese military camp in Manchuria. I ask her why she didn't try to escape.

"Of course I tried to escape several times!" she says. "Each time I was taken back and I was beaten over and over.

The military police would ask me 'Why are you trying to escape?' I would tell them because I am cold and have no food. They would hit me again saying I talked too much."

She says that she lost part of her hearing and some of her teeth from those assaults.

Revisionists like Mr Tamogami say women like Lee Ok Seon have been coached to embellish their stories; that they are tools of a South Korean government that is intent on humiliating Japan and squeezing it for more money

It is certainly true that the comfort women issue is used by the South Korean government for its own political ends. But there is plenty of other evidence that the Japanese military organised the comfort women system, not least from the men who served in the Japanese imperial army in China.

'Ridiculous to deny'

Masayoshi Matsumoto is now 93 and lives with his daughter on the edge of Tokyo. He has a warm open face and the piercing eyes of a much younger man.

Former Japanese soldier Masayoshi
Matsumoto: "I call myself a war criminal"

As a 20-year-old he served as a medical orderly in northwest China. "There were six comfort women for our unit," he tells me. "Once a month I would check them for sexually transmitted diseases.

"The Korean women were mainly for the officers," he says. "So the ordinary soldiers attacked local villages screaming, 'Are there any good girls here?' Those soldiers robbed, raped, or killed those who did not listen to them."

Those who were captured were taken to Mr Matsumoto's unit to serve as comfort women.

After the war Mr Matsumoto became a priest to try and atone for his sins. For decades he said nothing of what he'd seen.

But then as the voices of denial grew stronger he was filled with righteous anger, and decided to speak out.

"It's ridiculous... Mr Abe speaks as if this is something he witnessed, but he didn't. I did," says Mr Matsumoto.

"Someone told me this, 'One who fails to look back and perceive the past will repeat their wrongdoing'. But Mr Abe thinks we should erase anything bad Japan had done in the past and pretend nothing happened. That is why I cannot forgive him," he adds.

Mr Matsumoto sits back in his chair and chuckles.

Hirohito

"One day the right-wingers will come and get me for saying such things," he says, drawing a finger across his throat.

That seems unlikely, but Mr Matsumoto and all the other survivors are now in their late 80s or 90s. Soon they will all be gone - while the voices of denial grow louder and stronger.

If you look at this from a spiritual viewpoint, Japan was humiliated during WWII and after because of its many atrocities, but perhaps mainly for its deification of the Emporer Hirohito, and its legendary pride. Hirohito was only recognized as less than a god when he surrendered Japan.

By revising Japan's history, their pride can return, and they think that is a good thing. It isn't! God, the real God, hates pride. He also hates lies. 

The Japanese don't recognize the inherent, sinful nature of man; if they did they would not seek after pride. God revealed that to them through their defeat in WWII. That they could easily forget that lesson within a hundred years, means God has to humiliate them again in order to get their attention.