The 500 billion VND handshake between Pham Cong Danh and Ha Van Tham

The two former chairmen of these two commercial banks were not only involved in the purchase and sale of Construction Bank - VNCB, but also had loan contracts at Oceanbank.

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Defendant Pham Cong Danh (former Chairman of VNCB Board of Directors) was the mastermind in the case of causing a loss of more than 9,000 billion VND at the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court on the morning of July 19, 2016. Photo: Huu Khoa

Ambition to merge 2 banks

The verdict of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court shows that Pham Cong Danh received the structure of Dai Tin Bank when he was not capable and did not have the capital as committed to the State Bank, leading to a series of violations.

Pham Cong Danh was sentenced to 30 years in prison for violating regulations on lending by credit institutions and intentionally violating State regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences.

A character mentioned frequently in the trial of Pham Cong Danh and his accomplices was Ha Van Tham, former chairman of the Board of Directors of Oceanbank. Ha Van Tham was not present at the trial, but the defendants, those with related rights and obligations, all stated that Ha Van Tham had a hand in this transfer deal.

At the same time, the Supreme People's Procuracy's indictment prosecuted Ha Van Tham on three charges: violating regulations on lending by credit institutions; intentionally violating State regulations on economic management causing serious consequences; and taking advantage of position and power while performing official duties in the process of managing and operating Oceanbank.

Among the violations that Ha Van Tham was proposed to prosecute was lending 500 billion VND to Pham Cong Danh’s Trung Dung Company to restructure VNCB. Regarding Dai Tin (the predecessor of VNCB), the indictment also clearly identified Ha Van Tham’s role in buying, selling, and transferring shares of this bank.

Accordingly, the records determined that in early 2012, the State Bank had a policy of restructuring weak joint stock commercial banks. Because he wanted to acquire some banks for Oceanbank, Ha Van Tham met with Ms. Hua Thi Phan (representative of the shareholder group of Dai Tin Bank) to discuss transferring Dai Tin Bank to Tham.

Tham pointed out violations in the management and operation of the Board of Directors and Ms. Phan's borrowing of capital from Dai Tin Bank to request Ms. Phan to transfer the bank.

On February 23, 2012, Ms. Phan had Ngo Thi Kim Hue, Deputy General Director of Dai Tin Bank, sign an economic contract with Ha Van Tham to sell more than 254,000 shares (equivalent to 84.9% of charter capital) for 4.4 billion VND, along with inheriting all debt repayment obligations and owning collateral assets such as loans worth 3,553 billion VND, investments of 920 billion VND and a number of other obligations.

Buy agreement 4.4 billion, sell 4,600 billion

Mr. Ha Van Tham - Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Oceanbank.

After signing the contract, Ha Van Tham sent someone to manage Dai Tin Bank and merged it into Oceanbank, but did not pay 4.4 billion VND to Ms. Phan. Ms. Phan asked for payment many times but Tham did not pay.

After putting someone in charge of the bank, Tham realized that Dai Tin had a number of large loans and bad debts that could not be recovered, so she came up with the idea of ​​transferring Dai Tin Bank.

Through a broker, Ha Van Tham met Pham Cong Danh to transfer Dai Tin Bank shares to Pham Cong Danh. The two sides agreed that if Danh successfully took over Dai Tin, he would pay Tham 800 billion VND in brokerage fees. The amount of money that the two sides agreed to transfer over 252,000 shares was over 4,600 billion VND.

The verdict of Pham Cong Danh and his accomplices showed that Pham Cong Danh stated that Danh and his group of shareholders paid Ms. Hua Thi Phan 3,600 billion VND, an amount determined to have come from VNCB's own loan capital.

The money that Ms. Hua Thi Phan was paid by Pham Cong Danh was used to pay off Ms. Hua Thi Phan's loans at Dai Tin Bank.

However, in addition to the above amounts, Ha Van Tham also lent Pham Cong Danh (using the legal entity Trung Dung Company of Thien Thanh Group) 500 billion VND. This amount was secured by unqualified mortgaged assets (total value of only 482 billion VND), so up to now, Oceanbank has not been able to recover this amount.

The indictment stated that although Pham Cong Danh made mistakes in preparing loan documents and pledging assets of insufficient value as collateral for the loan, Ha Van Tham was the one who knew about these mistakes but still agreed to lend.

Therefore, the indictment determined that the fraudulent behavior of Pham Cong Danh and his group of employees did not constitute the crime of fraud and appropriation of property.

According to Tuoi Tre