4 defendants sentenced to 23 years in prison for illegally taking dozens of people to exploit seafood
Colluding with each other to change the ship's registration number and recruit dozens of fishermen to illegally exploit seafood in foreign waters, 4 defendants were sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison.
On January 29, the People's Court of Kien Giang province opened a trial and sentenced the defendants Tran Van Luyen (43 years old) to 8 years in prison, Tran Minh Tam (40 years old) to 7 years in prison, Pham Chi Dung (59 years old) to 7 years in prison and Tran Van Nhut (37 years old, all residing in Kien Giang province) to 1 year in prison for the crime of "Organizing illegal exit for others".
According to the indictment, on May 16, 2022, Tran Van Luyen (owner of the pair of ships numbered KG-94294-TS, KG-94295-TS) was arrested by Malaysian authorities for illegal fishing.
By the end of May, Luyen told Tam that if the pair of ships were redeemed, they would be discovered and confiscated by Vietnamese authorities.
Hearing that, Tam contacted a registration officer to discuss making a new set of ship documents (numbers KG-93949-TS and KG-93971-TS) to replace the documents of the arrested pair of ships for 400 million VND.
Then, Tam introduced Dung to be the captain of a ship for Luyen to go to Malaysia to illegally exploit seafood.
Luyen assigned Tam to find someone in Malaysia to buy information tickets from the port about the Malaysian Navy's patrols and then inform Dung and Luyen to avoid it.
Dung then recruited dozens of fishermen to board the ship to go to Malaysia to illegally exploit seafood and erased the last number of the ship to avoid detection by local authorities.
In mid-October 2022, Dung drove a pair of boats to Ca Mau province to sell fish. On the way to the mainland, the boats were inspected by the Coast Guard Region 4 and fined nearly 30 million VND (due to lack of fishing license, life buoy, captain's license - PV).
About a week later, Dung continued to operate the two ships mentioned above through Malaysian waters to illegally fish and exploit seafood.
While fleeing from the Malaysian Navy patrol, Dung drove his boat into Indonesian waters to fish and was discovered and arrested by the country's navy.
After the case occurred, the Security Investigation Agency of Kien Giang Provincial Police prosecuted and temporarily detained the above defendants.
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