Vietnam needs to verify the legality of documents submitted as evidence in an international corruption case before investigations continue, said Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong on Tuesday.

“I don’t doubt their investigation, but legally we can’t use the documents to press charges,” Cuong said.

“We need to study the papers to see which evidence is useful and then conduct another investigation under Vietnamese law.”

Early this month, Tran Van Truyen, Chief Inspector at the Government Inspectorate, announced that his division had completed the translation of 4,000 pages of documents, mainly in English, related to allegations that Huynh Ngoc Si, former head of the East-West Highway and Water Environment project, took bribes from three executives at the Tokyo-based Pacific Consultants International (PCI).

“It’ difficult to recognize documents, evidence and verdicts presented by foreign justice agencies,” said Cuong, noting that Vietnam and Japan had yet to sign agreements on mutual judicial support.

At a press conference prior to the 6^th conference of ASEAN-China Prosecutors General on November 24-25 in Hanoi, Khuat Van Nga, deputy head of the Supreme People’s Procuracy – Vietnam’s top prosecution office – said essentially the same thing.

But Nga also stressed that “it’s still possible to conduct an investigation into the case,” even though the documents were “indirect” evidence.

Si and his ex-deputy Le Qua were arrested in February after a Japanese court convicted the three Japanese executives of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Law, which bans the bribing of foreign government officials

The executives, who were given suspended sentences of 18 to 24 months, admitted to bribing Si with US$2.6 million between 2002 and 2006 in exchange for helping the company win a consulting contract on the Ease West project, funded with Japanese official development assistance (ODA), the Japanese daily newspaper Yomiuri reported last November.

The scandal led Tokyo to temporarily suspend aid loans to Vietnam last December. But the Japanese government announced in late February that it would resume ODA loans to Vietnam.

Si and Qua, were sentenced to jail-terms of three and two years respectively last month for abuse of power for pocketing $67,300 in rent while illegally leasing an office to PCI from August 2001 to November 2002.

Prosecutors later demanded longer jail terms of between 10 to 15 years each, saying the consequences caused by the violations were far more serious than the court recognized.

Source: Thanh Nien, Agencies