Receiving ‘kickbacks’ from Viet A, former director of CDC Tien Giang appeared in court

On April 25, the People’s Court of Tien Giang province held a first instance trial of defendant Nguyen Ngoc Chon – former director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) of Tien Giang province – and three accomplices, Vo Thanh Binh (former head of the department). CDC testing department), Trieu Vuong Tuyen (pharmacist) and Dang Minh Uy (testing department employee) for “violating bidding regulations causing serious consequences”.

According to the indictment, from June to September 2021, the COVID-19 epidemic in Tien Giang province broke out and became complicated. Tien Giang CDC was assigned additional funding of more than 31 billion VND to carry out epidemic prevention and control work, purchase equipment and chemicals to deploy testing.

As director of Tien Giang CDC, Mr. Chon directed Tien Giang CDC officials to set up procedures to request an advance payment for COVID-19 test kits, then set up procedures to validate all bidding documents for the purpose of Viet A Trading – Production and Services Joint Stock Company (Viet A Company for short) won the bid, causing damage to the state budget of more than 7 billion VND.

Accordingly, the total amount paid by CDC to buy test kits produced by Viet A Company is more than 11 billion VND. After Tien Giang CDC paid for the bidding package, Mr. Chon, Binh, Tuyen and Uy themselves did not agree in advance, but were paid a “commission” by Viet A Company outside the contract with a total amount of over 2 billion VND.

On May 24, 2022, the Police Investigation Agency of Tien Giang Provincial Police accepted and verified criminal information regarding the act of “violating regulations on bidding causing serious consequences”, which occurred at CDC Tien Giang.

From June 6, 2022 to June 9, 2022, Mr. Chon, Binh, Tuyen and Uy went to the police investigation agency to submit a report and request to return the total amount of more than 2 billion VND mentioned above.

According to the indictment, in his leading role, Mr. Chon directed the advance of test kits for use and legalized bidding documents so that Viet A Company won the bid illegally and received “kickbacks” in the amount of money. 450 million VND.

Tuyen acted as an accomplice and directly legalized the entire bidding documents and received an amount of 420 million VND.

Mr. Binh committed a crime as an assistant, failed to properly perform his duties, signed on documents (in fact without a meeting) to legalize the bidding documents and received an amount of 375 million VND.

As for Uy, he committed the crime of being a helper, actively contacting to ask for a price quote for the test kit, then proposed to buy the test kit from Viet A Company and transferred the quote file to Tuyen to complete the procedure to borrow the test kit. experience, bidding documents and received the amount of 782 million VND.

The trial is expected to take place on April 25 and 26.