The Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) on Monday expelled Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long and Hanoi Mayor Chu Ngoc Anh, who was also the city’s Party chairman.
Anh was subsequently arrested, along with former deputy science minister Pham Cong Tac, in connection with a massive corruption scandal surrounding expensive coronavirus test kits.
The test kits were produced by a company called Viet-A Technologies, which allegedly bribed numerous officials to push its absurdly overpriced Chinese coronavirus tests into hospitals.
The kits, which were developed with an $830,000 government grant, were originally supposed to cost about $21 each. The Ministry of Science and Technology announced in April 2020 that the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) had authorized the kits for international sale. The VCP hung medals on Viet-A executives for their great achievement. Huge revenue from a flood of overseas orders was expected.
The science ministry was lying about W.H.O. approving the Viet-A test kits. The company jacked up domestic prices for its test kits by 45 percent, paid off officials to ensure Vietnamese hospitals would be required to purchase them, and pocketed $175 million in profits.
Two high-ranking Vietnamese government officials have been kicked out of the ruling Communist Party over involvement in a $172 million COVID-19 test kit scandal. https://t.co/0oTGdO0PG6 pic.twitter.com/DYeEbdmkmI
— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) June 7, 2022
More bribes were handed out to protect the company from investigation. When he was arrested last December, Viet-A chairman Phan Quoc Viet estimated he had forked over $22 million in bribes to dozens of officials. Some of those officials were accused of padding their pockets even further by embezzling money from the coronavirus test kit project.
The Viet-A scandal became a huge embarrassment for the VCP, which had been boasting about its great success at rooting out corruption. The Party expulsions announced Monday were seen as rare and drastic actions. Some of the other alleged embezzlers and bribe-takers were military officers, which seriously damaged the reputation of the Vietnamese military.
VCP General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has presided over hundreds of corruption cases, but they rarely involve officials as highly-placed as those expelled Monday. Trong, currently serving an unusual third term as party chief, compared his anti-corruption campaign to a “blazing furnace” that corrupt officials would be tossed into like so much garbage.
Vietnam hopes to attract more foreign investors as it grows distant from its former patron China, so it wishes to cultivate an image as an honest market where overseas money can feel safe. Rank corruption will make it harder for the Vietnamese to catch the eye of global corporations looking to get out of China.
No one is likely to mistake Vietnam for a free market, or a free nation, but by cracking down hard on the Viet-A scandal, Trong and his officials hope foreign business interests might at least decide the bribes necessary for doing business in Vietnam are affordable.
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