Former SJC General Director instructed subordinates to create 'fictitious holes' to embezzle billions of dong.
By fabricating and altering documents to show that gold was purchased at a high price and sold at a low price to create fictitious losses, the General Director of SJC, along with his accomplices (subordinates), embezzled billions of dong from the company.
The Supreme People's Procuratorate has just completed the indictment against 16 defendants in the case involving Saigon Jewelry Company Limited (SJC Company).
In this case, Ms. Le Thuy Hang (former General Director of Saigon Jewelry Company Limited - SJC) was prosecuted for "Embezzlement of assets" and "Abuse of position and power while performing official duties".
Saigon Gold, Silver and Gemstone Company Limited, headquartered on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, is owned by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. Its main business activities include the production of gold bars, non-ferrous metals, and precious metals; retail sale of gold, silver, and gemstones; and buying and selling gold bars.
From December 5, 2019, Ms. Le Thuy Hang held the position of General Director and legal representative. During the performance of her duties assigned by the State Bank of Vietnam in the production and reprocessing of damaged SJC gold bars, the production of SJC gold rings, and the sale of SJC gold bars at stable prices, Ms. Le Thuy Hang, along with her accomplices, embezzled assets and abused her position and authority to gain illicit profits, causing significant financial losses to the state.
Investigation documents show that, in late March 2024, noticing that SJC Central Vietnam Branch was profitable, with the intention of misappropriating SJC Central Vietnam's assets, Ms. Le Thuy Hang instructed Hoang Le Hue (Director of SJC Central Vietnam Branch) to reduce profits by adjusting documents, creating a loss, and transferring a portion of the difference to Hang. The remaining portion was used by Hue and the Branch.
To withdraw the money, Hue devised a method of creating fictitious gold purchase invoices with high prices and gold sales invoices with low prices, or altering and canceling low-priced gold purchase documents and creating new high-priced gold purchase documents, thereby creating a loss to withdraw the difference.
The indictment identifies Hue as the person who provided price information and set the quantity of gold to be bought and sold based on the gold buying and selling prices listed by SJC Company, but the prices fluctuated at times during the day.
Then, Hue informs the store manager or, through the accountant, the accountant informs the store manager.
Based on information provided by Ms. Hue or the accountant, Nguyen Thi Thu Hien (store manager) directly instructed and directed employees at the store to create fictitious gold purchase and sale documents or modify existing gold purchase and sale documents to create losses, and then signed off on the completed sections of the documents.
At the end of the day, Hien gathered all the aforementioned documents, either directly stamping them or handing them over to the cashier at store 193 Hung Vuong - SJC Central Branch to stamp "money received" on the fictitious purchase orders and sales invoices, as well as stamping the documents that had been created and modified, withdrawing the difference and giving it to Hue.
After completing and amending the fictitious documents, Store 193 Hung Vuong transferred all the sales documents to SJC Central Vietnam Branch. At that point, the cashier and accounting staff of SJC Central Vietnam Branch signed the documents and then forwarded them to the SJC Central Vietnam Branch accountant for confirmation before entering them into the accounting software for SJC Company to monitor and manage.
Using the above scheme, from April 3rd to June 12th, 2024, the defendants used the information of 121 customers who had transacted with them to create 139 fictitious purchase orders, buying 3,815 ounces of gold at inflated prices (over 71 - over 91 million VND/ounce) with a total value of over 320 billion VND.
The defendants also used the information of 170 customers to create 200 fraudulent electronic sales invoices, selling 3,815 ounces of gold at low prices (70 - over 90 million VND/ounce) with a total value of over 317 billion VND, creating losses and embezzling over 3.1 billion VND from SJC Central Branch.
In that case, Ms. Hue transferred over 2.1 billion VND to SJC General Director Le Thuy Hang, and distributed 70 million VND to each of the other defendants. Ms. Hue herself kept 866 million VND.
