Former senior officers involved in a land scam in Quang Ninh Province received jail sentences ranging from six months probation to four years on Wednesday.

The 28 accused, including the former deputy chairman of the Mong Cai city’s People’s Committee, were found guilty of fraud, dereliction of duty, and abuse of power in illegally granting land use titles for more than 12,000 hectares to favored residents.

The panel of judges gave deputy chairman Chu Ba Hai to a two year suspended sentence for “dereliction of duty causing series consequences.”

When the committee began in 2003 to issue land titles to residents in Hai Hoa Ward, Mong Cai Town, local officials modified 268 applications to make them meet required conditions and granted other preferential considerations.

Eight heads of the ward’s subdivisions enabled the favored residents and their relatives to gain exemption from land-use fees, build houses on land allotted for farming, and benefit from other special incentives.

Among them, Lam Van Thanh and Le Ngoc Boi, former deputy chairmen of their ward People’s Committees, received four and three and a half years in jail respectively for “abusing power” in helping legitimize the applications.

Their superior Nguyen Thanh Duong received a two-year jail term for the same offence.

The indictment revealed that four land and housing officials sent by the ward People’s Committee to direct the granting of titles drew fake plans for land and certified applications knowing they had been changed illegally.

The land scam caused losses of more than VND32 billion (US$1.8 million) to the provincial budget, the indictment said.

Senior officials from the local People’s Council (legislature), the local Farmers’ Association, the Fatherland Front, and the justice department were also involved in the scam.

Nguyen Chi Cong, deputy head of the Mong Cai Department of Natural Resources and Environment and his subordinate Nguyen Ba Hung were found guilty of “breaking state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences” and both sentenced to two years in jail.

The prosecution agency early this month said the case also involved Pham Van Tieu, chairman of Mong Cai People’s Committee.

It blamed him for telling his subordinates to “worm through the law” and help as many locals as possible from paying land use fees so that they would stop complaining. Prosecutors said a different case will be filed against Tieu.

Yet Tieu’s name was not mentioned during the just–concluded court proceedings.

Reported by Pham Hai Sam