"Officials who "protect" their relatives' businesses must be severely punished"

Stating that there are cases where businesses and officials have interests related to each other, even colluding with each other, Dr. Dinh Van Minh - Director of the Institute of Inspection Science emphasized that this phenomenon is not only in Vietnam but is the story of many countries.

Through a number of "major cases" brought to trial recently, it can be seen that the common point is that the people involved used money to influence the implementation of policies for personal gain or were influenced by money.

Dr. Dinh Van Minh - Director of the Institute of Inspection Science (Government Inspectorate).

According to Mr. Minh, a person who has a position and authority that is “indebted” to a business may create more favorable conditions for that business. In addition, the business can easily become a “backyard” for “you to entrust, shares, stocks or other benefits to the business to legalize a source of money or assets. This is a phenomenon that exists in reality today”.

According to Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong - Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Judicial Committee, public opinion is currently concerned about the situation of giving and receiving bribes, collusion between private individuals and officials and civil servants to gain advantages in production and business or appropriating state assets occurring in different types of enterprises, including non-state enterprises, which are "backyards" and are sponsored by people with positions and powers. A number of high-ranking officials and civil servants have been disciplined for these violations.

However, according to this National Assembly delegate, it is necessary to objectively recognize that not all cases of enterprises with officials and civil servants contributing capital or having family members running the business are "backyards" of officials.

According to the law, a person being an official does not mean that his family members cannot do business, nor does it mean that he cannot contribute capital or buy shares in businesses. The important thing is to determine whether there is any conflict between public and private interests, and whether the field that person is assigned to manage is directly related to the field of operation of the business or not? If so, he has indeed violated the law.

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong said that we cannot judge an issue by looking at a few external phenomena. "When talking about a specific issue, we must have analysis, evaluation, and clear evidence. Otherwise, it is easy to make emotional and unfair conclusions."

The current anti-corruption law only prohibits officials and civil servants from establishing, managing, and operating private enterprises; agency heads and deputies are prohibited from allowing their spouses, parents, or children to do business within the scope of their direct management.

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong - Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Judicial Committee. Photo: Quang Binh Newspaper

Officials and civil servants holding management positions in state-owned enterprises are not allowed to sign contracts with enterprises owned by their spouses, parents, children, siblings; and are not allowed to allow enterprises owned by their spouses, parents, children, siblings to participate in bidding packages of their enterprises.

The law also strictly prohibits the arrangement of spouses, parents, children, brothers, sisters, or siblings to hold management positions in human resources organization, accounting - finance, as treasurers, warehouse keepers in enterprises, or to trade, buy and sell materials, goods, or sign contracts for enterprises.

Thus, it is not illegal for an official to not participate in the establishment or operation of a business, but only to contribute capital or buy shares in a business; or for a relative of the official (but not the wife, husband, father, mother, or child) to establish or operate a business in the field managed by that official. However, this issue will continue to be considered when amending the Law on Anti-Corruption to ensure better control of conflicts of interest and avoid abuse for personal gain.

Considering that there are businesses lobbying and "greasing" for individual officials is real, Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong affirmed that we can prevent this phenomenon. Accordingly, for the appointment process, we need to have more stringent measures. In particular, during the entire process of appointing an official to a certain position, the most important thing to pay attention to is transparency. When agencies bring transparency into the entire control process, those who are not qualified, those who have problems, those who have obstacles, those who are still unclear will not be able to be appointed, avoiding the situation of "running around".

According to Dr. Dinh Van Minh, when officials "secretly" protect or have some interests in "family" enterprises that lack transparency or violate, when the inspector discovers, they will certainly be severely punished. However, Mr. Minh also admitted that this is one of the major challenges of the inspection industry.

“The operations of enterprises themselves must be very transparent so that there is no way that officials can “entrust” their interests to them. Enterprises are for the development of the country, they cannot be someone’s “backyard”” – Mr. Dinh Van Minh hopes and believes that the Party’s determination in preventing corruption and negativity in recent times will continue to spread to rectify and clean up the cadre team./.