As reported by VietNamNet, the People's Procuracy of Quang Ninh province has just completed the indictment, prosecuting former Director of Hai Phong City Police Do Huu Ca and other defendants for the crimes of Fraudulent appropriation of property, Illegal trading of invoices and documents for state budget payment, Bribery, Receiving bribes and Tax evasion.
According to the indictment, from March 2013 to May 2022, the defendants Truong Xuan Duoc (born in 1971, in Hai Phong) and Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh (born in 1979, Duoc's wife) established, managed, and operated 26 companies to illegally buy and sell invoices for profit. Duoc and his wife illegally bought and sold 15,674 invoices, illegally profiting more than 41.2 billion VND.
Truong Xuan Duoc and his wife bribed Mr. Nguyen Dinh Duong, Head of the Tax Department, and Do Thanh Hoai, an officer of the Tax Department of Cat Hai District, Hai Phong City, 362 million VND to facilitate the establishment of companies to illegally buy and sell invoices.
Around October-December 2022, Duoc and his wife learned that Truong Van Nam (Duoc's nephew) was arrested and searched by the Quang Ninh Provincial Police Security Investigation Agency in connection with the illegal trading of invoices, while also investigating and verifying the company managed and operated by Duoc and his wife.
Duoc fled and directed his wife to meet Mr. Do Huu Ca (born in 1958, retired, former Director of Hai Phong City Police) to ask for "exoneration".
The indictment determined that the Duoc couple gave Mr. Ca 35 billion VND to “run away the case”. At that time, although Mr. Do Huu Ca was not able to help the Duoc couple escape being prosecuted for “Illegal trading of invoices”, he falsely promised to help in order to receive money and then embezzled it all.
According to Dr. and lawyer Dang Van Cuong (lecturer of Criminal Law, Thuy Loi University), if it was just a normal case of fraud and appropriation of property, the offender committed the act through legal civil economic relations, surely this amount of money would be returned to the victim to restore rights and reduce the damage caused by the crime.
However, in this case, the victim was defrauded of property, but at the same time was also the defendant in the case, and attempted to bribe but failed. Here, the purpose of bribery was to “fix the case”, which is an illegal purpose.
Dr. Cuong pointed out that there is currently no specific guidance document, nor is there any precedent regulating the above situation.
However, through monitoring some recent trials of similar cases, it shows that if the court determines that the fraudulent money as mentioned above is property used for illegal purposes, it will be confiscated and turned over to the State treasury, not returned to the defendant identified as the victim in the case.
According to Mr. Dang Van Cuong, it is impossible to completely protect the rights of victims when they themselves want to commit illegal acts but fail.
“In the future, there needs to be guidance from the Supreme Court to unify the settlement of civil issues in criminal cases for cases of bribery but identified as victims in fraud cases to unify the application of criminal law,” said Mr. Dang Van Cuong.
Source
Comment (0)