Phan Quoc Viet, CEO and chairman of Viet A Company, outside a court in Hanoi on December 29, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh
A businessman was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison for abuse of power and fraud in a case linked to the manufacture of a new Covid-19 test kit.
In addition to Phan Quoc Viet, CEO and president of Viet A Company, the Hanoi Military Court also convicted several officials from the Science and Defense Ministries for allowing the company to fraudulently obtain a license for the test kit as a state product.
According to the indictment, Trinh Thanh Hung, deputy head of the department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, launched a research project to make a test kit after the outbreak of Covid.
He recruited Viet and Son, former deputy director of a research institute run by the Military Medical School.
The medical school was tasked with manufacturing the kit and received more than 18 billion VND ($742,000) in government funding, but the product submitted for authorization to the Ministry of Health was the Viet A test kit.
The Viet had previously applied for a license for the kit, but it was rejected.
After the kit was authorized in March 2020 as part of a questionable project, Viet A produced it on a large scale and made more than VND1.2 trillion from it.
Hung was sentenced to 15 years and Son to 12 years for abuse of power. The two men were also ordered to return the money paid for the research.
The court found the defendants guilty of committing this fraud for personal gain, causing loss to the government and damaging public confidence in the military.
The Ministry of Health had revoked the license in June 2022 after determining that the authorization process did not follow proper protocols.
Viet faces another trial on January 3, this one involving former Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long.
