Nguyen Truong To, the People’s Committee Chairman of Ha Giang province, will be sacked for unethical behavior if a recommendation by the Communist Party’s Central Inspection Committee is accepted.

Ha Giang Province’s Chair Nguyen Truong To.

Both To’s job as chief of the northern border province and his Party membership are on the line, Hoang Trung Luyen, the chief of the local Department of Propaganda and Training, said on July 6.

The Central Inspection Committee’s report judged that “since 2005, . . . To has failed to lead an exemplary life but [instead] led an unwholesome life” that “seriously contravenes the morals expected of a Communist and causes bad effects on society.”

The committee has recommended that the Party sack To as deputy party secretary in Ha Giang and the Government remove him from the post of provincial chairman.

To was reportedly involved in a sex scandal. According to a number of sources, in late January 2006, Ha Giang Town police caught a girl named Dung in the act of selling her body at a local inn.

Checking the prostitute’s cell phone, police found several pictures of a buck-naked To. Dung declared that she took these pictures with her cell phone after having sex with To in late 2005. Police reported the case to the Ha Giang authorities but the file was buried.

Nguyen Huy Nam, the former chief of the Ha Giang Party Committee’s Organisation Department, insisted to a reporter for Nong Nghiep Viet Nam (Vietnam Agriculture) that “from 2005 until I retired (2009), neither the provincial Party Standing Committee nor its Organisation Department heard about this case.”

To’s wife told a reporter that she is very sad but she still believed in her husband after 39 years living together. She confirmed that she’d always be on To’s side no matter what happens.

In June 2010, the case was reopened. The Ministry of Public Security’s Institute for Criminal Sciences examined the photos and concluded that the pictures are not changed and the man in the pictures resembled To in other photos.

To initially rejected the photos but then on July 7, according to media reports, he admitted that he was the man in the four photos on the prostitute’s cell phone.

To, 57, was educated as an economist. Before being appointed provincial Chairman, he was the director of Ha Giang Department of Planning and Investment.

PV