Former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh

Former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh said an eight year jail sentence given Thursday to the former director of a major farm collective was too harsh a punishment for the Labor Hero title holder.

Suong, 60, was sentenced to eight years in jail for running a slush fund. She was also ordered by the city People’s Court to pay back VND4.3 billion (US$240,500) to the government. The decision kept unchanged a verdict reached by a lower court in August.

But Binh said what has been called a slush fund was actually a welfare fund for the collective. “Suong maintained the fund but not for herself. She didn’t hide anything for her own benefit.”

According to Suong’s lawyer Nguyen Dang Trung, the fund was set up 30 years ago, long before her term from 2001 to 2007, and was used to help collective members in need.

The court on Thursday, however, said was illegal for the state-run farm collective to maintain any funds off-the-books.

Suong was named a Labor Hero by the government in 2000 and honored at the International Federation of Business & Professional Women’s Women Inspire Awards in 2002.

Former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh, who represented the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam at the 1973 Paris Peace Accords as foreign minister, said in the VnExpress report that Suong deserved the title granted by the government because her collective farm helped improve the lives of thousands of farmers.

A report on Tuoi Tre newspaper Saturday said 110 members of the collective farm wrote to the Party Unit in Can Tho City expressing their wishes to serve jail time in place of Suong. Unit Deputy Chief Pham Thanh Van said authorities were verifying the authenticity of the letter to make sure the farmers wrote it of their own accord.

Many Song Hau farmers had entered the collective, one of Vietnam’s most successful, landless and with few prospects. Many have since grown prosperous with Song Hau, however some had protested Suong’s sentencing in August as too lenient.

Source: Thanh Nien