[AP] HANOI, Vietnam (AP) ‐ The former head of state-owned PetroVietnam was sentenced to death Friday for embezzlement and abuse of power committed in his former job leading a bank partly owned by Vietnam’s oil-and-gas giant. A judge in the graft case involving dozens of defendants warned that corruption by Communist Party members and civil servants threatened the regime’s survival.Nguyen Xuan Son was convicted by the Hanoi People’s Court of embezzling $2.15 million and abusing his power to appropriate another $8.7 million from Ocean Bank, a joint stock bank in which PetroVietnam had owned 20 percent of shares.
Ocean Bank chairman Ha Van Tham was given a term of life imprisonment for convictions on the same charges at the end of the monthlong trial involving 51 defendants, most of them Ocean Bank executives.
"The acts of Nguyen Xuan Son and Ha Van Tham are particularly serious, infringing on the rights of property of the state and organization causing anger and dissonant among the people that needs to be handled seriously ... in the fight against crimes in general and corruption in particular in the current time," said Truong Viet Toan, one of the two judges in announcing the verdict that lasted nearly three hours.
Toan said corruption degraded a number of Communist Party members and civil servants who stole the people’s trust in the ruling Communist Party and state and threatened to survival of the regime.