Opinion
Corruption reports reveal little in Vietnam
  • By Manh Quan | dtinews.vn | July 31, 2018 10:15 AM
The Government Inspectorate recently announced that reports from localities throughout the country showed only four corruption cases in the first half of this year.



Trinh Xuan Thanh at a Hanoi court in January


63 cities and provinces with dozens of ministries, departments, groups and corporations sent their reports on corruption and only three southern provinces of An Giang, Long An and Phu Yen found just four violations during six months. It's hard to believe in that figure. It only shows that most of the localities were not capable of finding and dealing with corruption, or they just tried to conceal the real situation.


It is easy to see problems in the reports of some departments. For example, the Customs Department always reported zero corruption cases in six consecutive months. However, inspections carried out by the Ministry of Public Security had brought dozens of customs officers to court for corruption in 2017 and early 2018.

Or some major corruption cases which involved leaders of the Ministry of Industry and Trade including Trinh Xuan Son or Trinh Xuan Thanh had been uncovered by the Government Inspectorate but not the ministry’s inspection team.

It can be said that the inspection teams in many localities and departments have done nothing in fighting corruption.

And even the number of 18 violations announced by the Government Inspectorate seems also too minor compared to the total 96,700 inspections they carried out during the first half of 2018.

That number seems too small in comparison with the VND10 trillion (USD441 million) and 32,600 hectares of land found to be involved in corruption cases.

Of course, some cases were huge and involved large sums of money or land. But with many violations which can also be reported as corruption, such as lying about the number of materials used in projects or falsely sending equipment for maintenance, these 18 violations and 14 violators found during six months were obviously too small in number.

People may never forget a famous saying by Head of Government Inspectorate Anti-corruption Bureau, Pham Trong Dat at a conference on corruption fighting in March 2016: "If we fight corruption, we'll die first."

It is easy to understand why there are such few corruption cases reported in the country.

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