Police in Hanoi are preparing an international arrest warrant for Tran Anh Tuan, former deputy head of the Finance Ministry’s Financial Department for the administrative sector, who swindled many organizations out of about VND80 billion (US$3.83 million) before fleeing Vietnam.
Tuan, 37, of Hanoi’s Ba Dinh District, who fled abroad in last December, has been prosecuted for the charges of “swindling appropriate assets” and “abusing trust of appropriate assets,” police said.
In July 2011, Tuan told Tran Duc Duong, director of a construction company in Hai Phong, that he was assisting Phu Tho Province-based Hung Vuong University in applying for thousands of billions of dong from the State budget in 2012 to invest in constructing the school’s infrastructure.
Tuan told Duong that he could help him engage in the project as a contractor if the businessman agreed to pay him a sum of money.
On July 19, the two men met at a café in Hanoi and Tuan asked Duong to pay him VND4 billion in advance; but Duong didn’t have enough money, and later transferred only VND1.5 billion to Tuan’s account.
They met several times later, but since October 2011 Duong has not been able to contact Tuan, until police confirmed that he had left Vietnam.
Another victim was Nguyen Kim Dung, director of a company in Hanoi, who also wanted to become a contractor for the university project and had provided Tuan with VND1.2 billion as a loan.
Tuan promised to repay the amount to Dung on November 1, 2011, but when the deadline came, Dung could not contact him.
Tuan cheated many other businesses to appropriate their money in similar ways.
Tuan also contacted the university’s management board and promised to help the school get capital from the State budget on the condition that the board agree to pay him an amount as expenses, but the school said it had no money to pay.
However, the Prime Minister has so far not yet approved the application by the Phu Tho Province People’s Committee for a grant of budget capital to build the school, investigators said.
Tuan had not been assigned to manage funding or grants from the State’s budget, investigators added.
The police are continuing with their investigation into Tuan’s swindle.
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