The Tien Giang Provincial Department of Home Affairs has instructed Tran Thanh Tien, 54, the general director of Tien Giang Tourism JSC, to resign this position.

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Tien is under investigation for his role in the privatization scandal that has rocked the upper Mekong Delta province. It has now been learned that Tien, an officer of the Home Affairs Department, had been secunded to the Tien Giang Tourism JSC as its director and continued to work there after it was privatised, not informing his superiors that the company now belonged to the family of a Vietnamese-American investor, Hoang Kieu.

Tien has been ordered to report to the Department on June 1. It is understood that Tien handed in his resignation, but his petition has not been approved yet.

Tien Giang Department of Home Affairs Deputy Director Nguyen The Hung said that his office didn’t discover that Tien was working for the privatised company full time though still a civil servant until mid-February 2010. Tien, Hung added, was instructed earlier in May to transfer all his files to the Department, including his declaration of personal assets.

At the same time, the Ministry of Public Security is collecting documents related to the privatization of Tien Giang Tourism Company and verifying the purchase of real estate by Tien during 2009-2010 (the same period that Hoang Kieu’s family aquired Tien Giang Tourism JSC). Reportedly at least five other pieces of land worth tens of billions of dong (millions of US dollars) in My Tho are now registered in the name of Tien’s 21-year-old son, who is studying at a university in HCM City.

Source: Tuoi Tre