Company owner jailed for Covid test kit fraud

Besides Phan Quoc Viet, CEO and chairman of Viet A Company, the Hanoi Military Court also sentenced several officials from the science and defense ministries for enabling the company to fraudulently get a license for the test kit as a state product.

According to the indictment, Trinh Thanh Hung, a department deputy head at the Ministry of Science and Technology, started a research project to make a test kit after Covid broke out.

He signed up Viet and Son, a former deputy director of a research institute run by the Military Medical School, for it.

The medical school was commissioned to make the kit, and it received more than VND18 billion (US$742,000) in government funding, but the product submitted for licensing by the Ministry of Health was Viet A’s test kit.

Viet had in the past applied for a license for the kit, but it was rejected.

After the kit was licensed in March 2020 as part of the dubious project, Viet A produced it on a large scale and earned more than VND1.2 trillion from it.

Hung was sentenced to 15 years and Son to 12 years for abuse of power. The two were also ordered to return the money given for the research.

The court found the defendants guilty of committing the fraud for personal gain, causing a loss to the government and damaging the trust the public has in the military.

The health ministry had revoked the license in June 2022 after determining that the licensing process did not follow proper protocols.

Viet faces another trial on Jan. 3, this one involving former health minister Nguyen Thanh Long.