Vietnam jails officials over pandemic bribes
HANOI—A court in Vietnam on Friday jailed more than a dozen officials for up to 12 years for corruption over repatriation flights and quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The case is part of a major anti-graft drive that has led to the resignation of a president and two deputy prime ministers in a country where political changes are usually carefully orchestrated.
Last year, 54 officials and businesspeople were found guilty of receiving, offering or acting as go-between for bribes that state media said totaled $9.5 million.
They included four former senior officials at the ministries of foreign affairs, health and public security, who were handed life sentences.
At the height of the pandemic in early 2020 Vietnam had closed its borders to almost everyone bar returning citizens.
The defendants in the two cases were accused of giving or taking bribes to help people get seats on repatriation flights and receive medical quarantines.
At the time, returnees faced complicated entry procedures, expensive flights and quarantine costs.
The defendants “took advantage of policies by the party, state and their positions.. to agree on bribes and did wrong… in bringing back citizens for medical quarantine,” Cong Ly newspaper quoted the Friday verdict as saying.
Tran Tung, a former official for northern Thai Nguyen province, was found guilty of taking around $300,000 in bribes and commission for organizing quarantine facilities.
He was given 12 years in jail for receiving bribes and abuse of power.
Sixteen other transport ministry, provincial officials and travel company employees were sentenced to up to three and a half years in jail on charges including bribery and abuse of power.
Anticorruption drive
Last year, a Hanoi mother told AFP how she had spent over $10,000 to get her teenage daughter back to Vietnam from a boarding school in Europe at the peak of the pandemic.
The graft allegations come as part of an anticorruption drive that has uncovered a number of deals done during Vietnam’s pandemic response.
Last year, the National Assembly removed former foreign affairs minister Pham Binh Minh and Vu Duc Dam, who oversaw the Covid-19 pandemic response, from their positions as deputy prime ministers.
The crackdown also brought down President Nguyen Xuan Phuc after he “took political responsibility” for various officials’ shortcomings.
According to the public security ministry, in 2024, police put under their radar 825 cases with 1,676 people on corruption accusations, an increase of more than 16 percent compared to 2023.
Earlier this month, officials announced that an elderly Louisiana patient was in “critical condition” with a severe H5N1 infection.
Bird flu mutation
An analysis posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Thursday revealed that a small percentage of the virus in the patient’s throat carried genetic changes that could increase the virus’s ability to bind to certain cell receptors found in the human upper respiratory tract.
In another development, cat in Oregon died after consuming pet food confirmed to be contaminated with H5N1, prompting a recall of Northwest Naturals’ Feline Turkey Recipe raw and frozen pet food.
“This cat was strictly an indoor cat; it was not exposed to the virus in its environment,” said state veterinarian Ryan Scholz in a statement.
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, warned that infected outdoor cats could return home and expose people to the virus through close contact.
“If you have an outdoor cat that gets H5 from eating a dead bird,” she explained, “and that cat comes back into your house and you’re snuggling with it, you’re sleeping with it… that creates additional exposure risk.”
