Former health minister gets 18 years in jail over Covid test kit bribery

Long was accused of receiving bribes worth VND51 billion (US$2.25 million) from Viet A Company to let it sell the kits at inflated prices.

Phan Quoc Viet, CEO and chairman of Viet A, received 29 years in jail.

The Hanoi People’s Court also sentenced Trinh Thanh Hung, a former deputy department head at the Ministry of Science and Technology, to 14 years in jail; Nguyen Minh Tuan, former head of the Department of Health Equipment and Works, eight years; and Nguyen Huynh, former secretary of Long, nine years.

Prosecutors said that during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic, Viet had bribed several officials for a total of VND82 billion ($3.35 million) so that his company’s test kits could be approved for distribution by the Ministry of Health, and price negotiations set the kit’s price at VND470,000 each, three times than what it’s supposed to be.

By the time the case was busted, 6 million test kits by Viet A have been paid for by the government, totaling to over VND2.25 trillion. Investigators said Viet A had illegally gained VND1.235 trillion in discrepancies between the kits’ production costs and actual prices.

Viet was already sentenced to 25 years in jail last month in a different trial on how he and several officials from the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Science and Technology had submitted Viet A’s test kit for license as a government’s product.

The Health Ministry granted Viet A’s test kit license in 2020 and revoked it in 2022 after determining that the licensing process had not followed proper procedures.