HCMC – Former Hanoi chairman Nguyen Duc Chung has been sentenced to eight years in prison for being the mastermind behind the illegal purchase of water cleaning agent Redoxy 3C for Hanoi City, causing losses for the State.
He was found guilty of abusing powers while performing his official duties. Chung is serving a sentence of five years for appropriating the State’s secret files, so he must stay behind bars for 13 years in total, the local media reported.
The Hanoi People’s Court also handed down a jail term of four and 4.5 years to Vo Tien Hung, general director of the Hanoi Sewerage and Drainage Co., Ltd, and Nguyen Truong Giang, director of the Arktic Trading and Service Co., Ltd, respectively, for the same charge as Chung.
The court also asked Chung, Giang and Hung to compensate VND25 billion, VND7.1 billion and VND4 billion to the Hanoi Sewerage and Drainage Co., Ltd, respectively.
According to the court, Chung asked Germany’s Watch Water to research Redoxy-3C to purify lakes and rivers in Hanoi. The German firm later agreed to sell the water cleaning agent to the city at a competitive price of 8.5 euros per kilogram.
After the trial use of the first 100 kilograms, Chung did not ask Hung to buy Redoxy 3C directly from Watch Water but through Arktic, which was later found to be owned by Chung’s family.
From 2016 to 2019, Arktic imported more than 489,000 kilograms of Redoxy 3C at over VND115 billion and sold it to the Hanoi Sewerage and Drainage Co., Ltd for VND151 billion.
The acts caused losses of over VND36 billion for the State.
