VietNamNet Bridge – Businesses would rather use the netherworld’s debt collection services rather than contact law enforcement agencies.

The newly released report by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) showed that creditors can be 90 percent sure that they can get back the debts if they hire gangsters to do this, while the success probability is just 50 percent in case they take the debtors to court.

In general, creditors have to wait 15-30 days only to get the debts back with the assistance of gangsters. Meanwhile, it takes them at least 400 days to follow a lawsuit.

Especially, according to Nguyen Minh Duc from the VCCI’s Legal Department, it is less costly to hire gangsters to collect debts. The total expenses creditors have to pay to gangsters are equal to 40-70 percent of the debts’ values. Meanwhile, if taking debtors to court, they would have to pay 20-30 percent of the debts’ values, plus “underground fees” and many other unofficial fees.

In fact, creditors still have the third choice – using licensed debt collection service providers. In this case, the success probability is 70-80 percent and the required time is 60-90 days.

Answering the VCCI’s question which of the three solutions creditors would choose to collect debts, only 30 percent of them said they would follow the official way by raising lawsuits.

Duc said he himself got surprised when seeing businessmen shaking their heads on the question about the role of the law enforcement agencies.

Bui Truong Son from Phuc Hung Holding Company said though the court judged the debtors had to pay money to the company, a lot of difficulties still arose during the enforcement. As such, the judgment was not respected by the involved parties.

Lawyer Tran Xuan Tien from Dong Doi Law Office, who once worked at an enforcement agency for 15 years, said since businesses lost confidence in ineffective law enforcement bodies, they would rather use the underworld’s services than expect the support from the bodies.

Also according to Tien, in many cases, the businesses winning the lawsuits still could not collect debts and they still had to ask for the “support” from the netherworld to get money after wasting a lot of time on following the lawsuits.

Meanwhile, law enforcement bodies, the aiming point of the heavy criticism from the public, have blamed the ineffective enforcement on the unclear legal provisions.

Le Anh Tuan from the Ministry of Justice said one of the most important reasons behind the ineffective enforcement is the unreasonable legal framework with unclear and equivocal provisions.

Nguyen Van Luyen, former General Director of the Civil Judgment Enforcement Department, noted that in many cases, the enforcement missed the deadlines. As a result, businesses could not collect debts as soon as they wanted, while they had to pay additional fees for the delay. Meanwhile, the current regulations do not show how to deal with the problems.

Dr. Le Dang Doanh, a well-known economist, has pointed out that it is an urgent task to ensure the effective law enforcement, or the national economy would suffer, because investors would hesitate to invest once they think they cannot be protected by the laws.

TBKTVN