Police escort Vu Van Luan, Tran Van Khoa and Ngo Chi Huan from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City late October.

Criminals run the southern hub’s mean streets via networks of contract killers, loan sharks and debt collectors.

“Many dangerous gangs are operating as illegal debt collectors or they coerce residents for ‘protection’ money,” said lieutenant-colonel Nguyen Thanh My of HCMC Police Department.

He said police had been investigating several such gangs, but their activities had not slowed, even following the recent arrests of several high-profile figures from the northern port city of Hai Phong.

Police have long said that Hai Phong gangs were cooperating with each other to take over large sections of the city rather than staking out their own territory.

“They recruit drug addicts or ex-convicts to collect football gambling debts. They use these people as loan sharks and to collect from companies with bad debts. They often coerce protection money out of restaurants and prostitutes,” said a city police officer who operates under My.

Hired killers

In a recent arrest on November 18, HCMC police took into custody Ngo Quang Truong, director of real estate investor Hoang Hai Ltd. in Hoc Mon District, on charges of fraud and for allegedly hiring contract killers to take out Dang Xuan Si, his deputy who had blown the whistle on Truong’s fraudulent land dealings.

According to police, Si had revealed earlier this year that Truong was illegally selling land plots before ground clearance. Si then withdrew his investment in the company and sent a note accusing Truong to the city’s Department of Planning and Investment.

On October 15, Si was found stabbed to death.

Truong was detained after the police arrested four men allegedly involved in the murder: Hai Phong native Vu Van Luan, Bui Quoc Huy and Tran Van Khoa from the northern province of Vinh Phuc, and Ngo Chi Huan from the Mekong Delta’s Hau Giang Province.

Investigators said Truong had hired Luan to attack Si. Police said Luan had then hired five other men, including Khoa, Huy and Huan. Police are still looking for two others, identified only as Tan and Toan.

Si was stabbed three times by Toan on Hai Ba Trung Street in District 1, said police. The gang fled the scene on motorbikes, according to eyewitnesses. The 51- year-old was rushed to hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

Robbery, ransom

Police said Luan was the leader of a gang in his own right and had committed several other crimes in HCMC.

In June, Luan and his wife and nine members of his gang kidnapped a man from a Thu Duc District gambling den after accusing him of cheating, according to investigators who said the kidnappers attacked several others at the scene in the process.

The gang robbed the man of VND10 million and took him to a hotel in Tan Phu District where they called his wife and demanded ransom of another VND10 million and US$200, police said. The kidnappers also forced the man to sign a debt note of VND260 million, according to investigators.

From educator to criminal

Police said 32-year-old Khoa was also the leader of yet another separate gang that had worked together with Luan in Si’s murder.

Khoa had studied at the Binh Duong College of Education and then found a job as a primary school teacher in the southeastern province before moving to HCMC in 2000.

The details of his transition to the underworld are foggy, but he was soon known as one of the city’s regular gangsters.

Police said he would recruit gang members by offering broke criminals cooking, lodging and drugs.

He built up a loyal force that then held up several gambling dens in District 12 and Thu Duc, according to investigators.

The gang has been accused of robbing the victims of traffic accidents as well as hiring out thugs to threaten or attack people.

Drug trafficking

Another notorious gangster from Hai Phong, Do Dinh Hiep, has been identified by police as the leader of a major drug smuggling ring that was busted in HCMC in 2007.

The 45-year-old criminal had employed several people, mostly from his native city, to supply methamphetamine at bars and dance clubs in the city, according to police reports.

Police said the gang intimidated neighborhood businesses by beating up bar and club patrons to force the business owners to pay money in order to ‘allow’ them to operate there.

Hiep was also a drug addict who had contracted HIV, police said. His ring had supplied thousands of methamphetamine pills throughout the city before his arrest.

Also in 2007, police arrested Hai Phong native Tran The Hung, who ran a drug network in Tan Binh District.

He moved to HCMC in May 2007 to avoid evade police after an incident in which a member of his gang stabbed a rival at the Hoang Gia Dance Club in Hai Phong a month earlier.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff