VietNamNet Bridge – 38-year-old Nguyen Thi Van Huong, a former clerical employee at the representative office of AP news agency in Hanoi, has been arrested for allegedly misappropriating VND5.1 billion (US$243,000).

The photo of Nguyen Thi Van Huong. (Photo: Lao Dong)
Earlier, investigators had initiated criminal charges against Huong and issued a wanted notice for her over charges of embezzling a large sum of money from the office.

Nguyen Thi Van Huong was hired by AP representative office in Hanoi in July, 2007 to perform administrative work including writing pay-slips and working out business-trip expenses for the AP staff. She was also assigned to be a cashier to do credit transactions with banks.

According to investigators, Huong had written and submitted a number of payment cheques to the head of the office for his approval. Afterwards, she erased the approved sums written on the cheques and replaced them with a much larger amount. After successfully cashing the cheques, she pocketed the disparities.

Using this trick, from January to June 2008, Huong cashed a total of 17 cheques and withdrew more than VND6.7 billion from the office’s bank account while the amount approved was just VND83.8 million.

When the AP office discovered the loss and reported to local police, Huong put more than VND1.5 billion back into the account and fled.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre