Finally, the eight-year saga comes to a happy ending when Hoang Van Nghien, former chairman of Hanoi City government, agrees to hand over a villa in the capital city to the State.

The village on Nguyen Che Nghia Street.

The former leader, who retired eight years ago and whose application to buy the official-use villa was then rejected, has rented the pricey property ever since, defying repeated calls by State agencies to return the villa. While the final outcome can be deemed satisfactory, disputes surrounding the handover give much food for thought over the loose management of State assets, as covered in local media these days.

The villa, measuring some 400 square meters on Nguyen Che Nghia Street in the heart of Hanoi City, is said to be valued at millions of U.S. dollars. The former chairman, renting the villa at less than VND500,000 a month, or just over US$20, is not living at the State-owned building, but leaves it all to his son. Hanoi officials have many times suggested that Hoang Van Nghien return the villa, and in compensation, they will look for another villa for the former chairman. In March last year, the Hanoi Construction Department secured a land lot in Cau Giay District, and suggested this solution to Nghien, who last May approved the compensation scheme but then swiftly rejected it in a reply last July, Tien Phong reports. Then, only last month, the former chairman of Hanoi City wrote to authorities saying he approved the above-said scheme under which the city government will build a villa, and will sell it to Nghien at a concessional price upon demand.

Such an offer has angered the public, and many people, especially National Assembly deputies, have voiced their protests. And last week, the former chairman wrote a letter to Hanoi City authorities saying he agreed to return the villa.

The saga becomes a special case study, which sheds light on the current status of official-use houses across the country. It is found out that numerous leaders have not returned official-use houses or condos after retirement.

Tuoi Tre in a cover story gives a long list of officials not returning houses or condos after ending their tenures in Hanoi. Those officials assert in the newspaper that they are ready to return the properties, but not any agency has ever asked them to do so. Says one retired deputy minister in Tuoi Tre: “I’d say that not any agency has ever given me a decision to take back the house, so it is not right to say that we do not return the official-use house.”

Prevailing regulations, according to Tuoi Tre, require that officials have to return houses to the State within three months upon the end of the tenures or when they are no longer eligible for renting such official-use houses. They are not allowed to transfer or lease such properties to a third party under any form.

Therefore, both the lessor representing the State and the lessee as beneficiaries have not abided by the law. This is illegal and must be stopped, says the paper.

State President Truong Tan Sang, in a meeting with voters in HCMC last week, said that State personnel agencies are to blame for failing to take back official-use houses right after such officials retire, according to Doi song va Phap luat.

The newspaper points out that the situation of official-use houses and condos not being returned promptly is quite widespread. At Hoang Cau Condo Complex in Hanoi’s Dong Da District, for example, three quarters of official-use condos there are misused. An inspection by the Ministry of Construction shows that of 80 apartments in total, only 21 are being occupied by current officials, while 30 apartments are used by retired officials and the remaining 29 ones are used by relatives of retired officials.

At the NA sitting in Hanoi, deputy Le Nhu Tien pointed out that official-use houses and condos totaled 1.6 million square meters, but “many officials after retirement have sought to occupy such properties permanently.”

Vietnamnet labels the reluctance to return official-use houses to the State by retired officials as a form of corruption.

“Corruption now takes many forms, including abuse of loopholes in incentive policies,” says the news website. “How can it not be seen as corruption when occupying the State villa for eight years and paying just a trivial rent?”

The online paper reports that the amount retrieved from corruption cases was less than 10% in 2013. Referring to a similar case of former head of the Government Inspectorate Tran Van Truyen, who was forced to return a house in HCMC to the State, Vietnamnet asserts that “clearly the mechanism to fight corruption is not efficient when power is not supervised by the people.”

Le Nhu Tien, a senior NA official, says in Tuoi Tre that State properties wrongly owned by retired officials, as seen in the case of the former general inspector, is just a small tip of a huge iceberg, and there must be a single agency tasked with managing all official-use houses and condos nationwide. Loose management over such houses has given rise to corruption, says Tran Ngoc Vinh, another NA deputy.

The two recent cases relating to the former chairman of Hanoi City and the former chief of the Government Inspectorate, says Nguoi Lao Dong, must be further addressed by clarifying responsibilities of all people and agencies involved. Otherwise, the situation of officials seeking to make private gains from public assets would continue in the future.

SGT/VNN