On the afternoon of August 31, the Hanoi People's Court sentenced 135 defendants in a transnational loan sharking case, with interest rates up to 2,190%/year and gangster-style debt collection.
After 10 days of trial, the Hanoi People's Court determined that at the trial, the defendants confessed to the acts as alleged in the indictment, consistent with the documents and evidence in the case file.
The panel of judges found that the defendants’ actions were dangerous to society and caused social disorder. This was an organized lending system with high interest rates, in which each defendant was a link, assigned specific tasks, and was tightly organized with the same goal of making a profit.
This is an organized crime case, led by Li Zhao Qiang (Chinese); defendants Zhang Min (Chinese) and Nguyen Quang Vu (Ba Dinh district, Hanoi) played important supporting roles.
During the trial, the panel of judges found that the defendants had confessed honestly and had good personal records; some defendants were raising children under 36 months old... so this was a mitigating circumstance.
According to the People's Court, defendant Li Zhao Qiang is currently not in Vietnam, so the investigation agency has issued a wanted notice.
Based on the documents in the file, the defendants' testimonies in court, the defense of the lawyers and related people, the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the panel of judges decided to sentence the defendant Zhang Min to 15 years in prison for both crimes of "Extortion of property" and "Lending at high interest rates in civil transactions"; and sentenced the defendant Nguyen Quang Vu to 14 years in prison for the same two crimes mentioned above.
For the remaining 133 defendants, the panel of judges considered and applied all appropriate aggravating and mitigating circumstances to impose sentences commensurate with the crimes of each defendant for the crimes of “Lending at high interest rates in civil transactions”; “Extortion of property”; “Tax evasion”. Among them, some defendants were given suspended sentences, while others were sentenced to sentences equal to their detention periods. The defendants were forced to return the illegally obtained profits.
According to the case file, in October 2017, Li Zhao Qiang entered Vietnam and created applications named "Cash Vn", "Vaynhanhpro"... with servers located in Hong Kong. The above applications were created with the purpose of lending money to Vietnamese customers, with interest rates ranging from 43,000 VND to 60,000 VND/million VND/day.
This lending line operates mainly in Hanoi, later expanding to neighboring provinces.
To organize the operation, Li Zhao Qiang discussed and hired Vietnamese subjects to organize and operate related businesses to lend money and collect debts.
To recover the loan, the defendants divided the debt into groups. For the group that was 4-9 days overdue, the defendants would call to curse, insult, and threaten; for the group that was 10-17 days overdue, they would post photos of customers on their Facebook accounts or combine photos of customers naked, in coffins, and wanted... If the group was 18-25 days overdue, the defendants would post the edited photos on social networking sites, in the area around the house, or directly go to the house to threaten...
From January 2019 to May 2022, the defendants carried out usury loans, extortion of property, tax evasion, and illegal profits of more than VND 732 billion by lending money to more than 120,000 customers.
DO TRUNG
Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/tuyen-an-nhom-cho-vay-nang-lai-thu-hoi-no-bang-cach-chui-boi-cat-ghep-anh-post756645.html
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