HCMC – A delegation of National Assembly (NA) deputies in HCMC will hold a meeting this week and urge the NA Standing Committee’s Deputies Affairs Board to consider dismissing Pham Phu Quoc from his post as an NA deputy of the city over holding a Cypriot citizenship.
At a press briefing on September 1, the municipal administration provided information about Quoc holding two nationalities and affirmed that measures to deal with his case will be adopted this month.
Addressing the meeting, Ha Phuoc Thang, chief of the HCMC People’s Committee Office, said that the competent municipal agencies had executed sufficient and accurate works as regulated when Quoc ran for election for an NA seat.
In February 2018, Quoc acquired his Cypriot passport but did not report it to the municipal administration. Such an act is not exemplary and does not comply with the Party’s regulations, Thang added.
On August 25, after the case was uncovered, Quoc tendered his resignation from the posts of NA deputy of the city as well as the general director of the state-owned Tan Thuan Industrial Promotion Company.
Earlier, Al Jazeera had reported that Cyprus’s passport program allowed individuals who invested at least US$2.5 million in the country to possess its passport. This means these individuals are eligible to become European Union (EU) citizens, to travel and work freely in the 27 member countries of the EU and enter 174 countries without a visa.
NA Deputy Quoc’s name was mentioned among the list of foreigners that possess a Cypriot passport.
In response to reporters’ inquiries, Quoc, a 52-year-old resident in the central province of Quang Tri, admitted that he had acquired the Cypriot citizenship in mid-2018, but his wife and son, who already have Cypriot passports, acted as guarantee for him to obtain the passport, and he did not “buy” the nationality as reported by Qatar’s Al Jazeera.
