VietNamNet Bridge – An appeal court on Friday ruled in favour of Dinh Manh Thang, the younger brother of former Politburo member Dinh La Thang, reducing his sentence for corruption to seven years in prison.

An appeal court on Friday ruled in favour of Dinh Manh Thang (first left), the younger brother of former Politburo member Dinh La Thang, reducing his sentence for corruption to seven years in prison.– Photo vnexpress.net

The Ha Noi High-level People’s Court decided to cut two years off Thang’s initial sentence handed down by a February court this year. The court still found Thang guilty of embezzlement at the PetroVietnam Power Land JSC (PVPLand) - a real estate subsidiary of the State-owned oil and gas behemoth PetroVietnam.

The corruption scandal at PVPLand involved eight people, including the instigator Trinh Xuan Thanh, from different companies who agreed to undersell more than 12 million shares of PVPLand in Xuyen Thai Binh Duong company to a private construction company, Minh Ngan.

The loss to the State coffers, or the difference between actual price paid - VND34 million (US$1,500) for every sq m for the Nam Dan Plaza project owned by Xuyen Thai Binh Duong - and the contract price at VND52 million for every sq m in the transaction reached up to VND87 billion.

Those involved split the illicitly gained VND49 billion among themselves, with Thanh taking the lion’s share of VND14 billion.

The appeal court, taking into account that Thang “honestly confessed his crime” while he also “had several achievements during his career and his family’s mass contribution to the revolution”, decided to reduce his prison sentence.

The Friday court also gave Thai Kieu Huong, former deputy general director of the Vietsan Investment Co who acted as a broker for the illegal transaction, eight instead of ten years behind bars. It took into consideration Huong’s family financial difficulty and their contribution to the revolution.

The court, however, denied the appeals of Nguyen Thi Kim Thoa and Huynh Nguyen Quoc Duy. Their sentences were kept the same at six and 10 years in prison, respectively.

Source: VNS