VietNamNet Bridge – Hoang Kieu, President of the US-based RAAS Group, a tycoon, who once appeared in all local newspapers when heating up the mild land area of Tien Giang with a lot of promised huge projects, has disappeared quietly.

Some years ago, Hoang Kieu, a Viet Kieu in the US, who always affirms his love to the homeland of Vietnam, was warmly welcomed in Vietnam.

In early 2009, local residents in Tien Giang province got excited with the news that Hoang Kieu, the tycoon, would bring the “2010 Miss World pageant” to the Thoi Son isle in Tien Giang province, though the pageant was initially planned to take place in the sea city of Nha Trang in the central region.

Local residents then took pride of their land where there is the “gem island” of Thoi Son which has wonderful landscapes and favorable conditions to serve the pageant. If such an important event had taken place in the province, this would have helped promote the tourism industry in the locality.

At that time, Hoang Kieu and his family members held 100 percent of stakes of Tigi Tour, which came forward and planned to organize the beauty contest.

A banderole with the words “Welcome 2010 Miss World” was then hung over on the Thoi Son isle. After that, Hoang Kieu spent money to buy land at sky high prices and hurried to implement the construction items to serve the beauty contest.

However, Kieu seemed to be too excited with the pageant, while he forgot that the government did not give the nod to the Tien Giang provincial authorities’ proposal to organize the contest in Tien Giang instead of Nha Trang as previously planned.

At that time, commenting about the proposal, analysts said that Thoi Son isle did not have necessary conditions to organize such a big event.

After that, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism sent a dispatch to the Tien Giang provincial authorities, officially rejecting the proposal, affirming that the beauty contest would still take place in Nha Trang as initially planned.

Then local residents got exceedingly astonished when realizing that the competent agencies in Tien Giang did not grant the licenses to the construction of many items in the Thoi Son tourist site, but the items were still implemented by the investor to serve the pageant.

Kieu also started the component projects on a power generation plant and water filtration lake on a land plot he bought from a local woman at a sky high price and had not paid all the money, even though the construction items were not licensed.

Finally, the land purchasing deal was broken, when Kieu gave up the VND13 billion in deposit money. The land plot was priced at several billions of dong only before Kieu tried to negotiate for the deal.

As a result, Hoang Kieu was asked to pay the fine of VND35 million for illegally building the works. He then stopped the execution of most of the construction items, stopped the operation of the tourism service establishments, thus badly affecting the tourism industry of Tien Giang.

The local authorities then asked Kieu to put the tourism projects into operation, or they would take back the land.

Kieu has not turned up in Tien Giang over the last two years, while all the activities of Tigi Tour have been assigned to his relatives.

Local residents have realized that Kieu took over Tigi Tour and invested in Thoi Son isle not because he wanted to help develop Tien Giang’s tourism as promised, but just served the “Miss World game” he planned a long time ago.

Meanwhile, the construction works serving tourism have been left idle, while Thoi Son isle has been quiet because of no tourist.

Hoang Ha