Two former police generals and their fateful encounter

After the fateful meeting with Nguyen Van Duong, two former police generals were "in trouble".

At yesterday's trial of the trillion-dollar gambling case, defendant Nguyen Thanh Hoa testified about his relationship with Nguyen Van Duong and said that the first time he met Duong was in 2010, in a very special case.

“I went to the Tran Temple festival, my friend’s car was impounded by Nam Dinh police for parking in the wrong place. Everyone said that Mr. Duong was very close to the Nam Dinh Police Director, so he could get it. And that’s right, I asked and finally got the car back,” Mr. Hoa testified.

After that meeting, while requesting approval to establish a front company, Mr. Hoa was introduced by former police general Phan Van Vinh to meet Nguyen Van Duong to establish a front company for C50.

On September 30, 2011, Nguyen Van Duong established High-Tech Security Development Investment Company Limited (CNC) and became Chairman of the Board of Directors. 10 days later, Mr. Hoa signed a memorandum of understanding on business cooperation with Duong...

On May 3, 2012, Duong sent a document to two former police generals, Phan Van Vinh and Nguyen Thanh Hoa, reporting on the current state of online gambling activities in Vietnam. In it, he requested the leaders of the General Department of Crime Prevention and Control, C50, to "create favorable conditions to support CNC in working with partners in building and organizing the release of gambling games on the Internet."

This is to study and make practical recommendations to manage the above illegal activities, creating revenue for CNC to have financial resources to build a professional hacker force, serving the assigned political tasks.

In early 2015, Phan Sao Nam (former Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director of VTC online company), knowing that Duong's CNC was a front company of C50, met and proposed that Duong cooperate in releasing online gambling software on the Internet in the form of Rikvip card game and Duong agreed.

Statement of "donating" billions to two former police generals

According to Nguyen Van Duong's statement at the investigation agency, he earned a lot of money from organizing gambling and paid a lot to Mr. Hoa and Mr. Vinh.

Duong confessed: Because C50 and the General Department of Police as well as some individuals from these two agencies created favorable conditions for CNC in its business activities, Duong used a portion of the company's profits and most of the money earned from organizing gambling to give to two former police generals.

Duong confessed to giving defendant Nguyen Thanh Hoa 22 billion VND; giving Phan Van Vinh 27 billion and 1.75 million USD.

Specifically, during the operation of the Rikvip.com card game, Duong gave Mr. Vinh 2 billion VND/month for 12 months. During the operation of the Tip.Club card game, Duong gave Mr. Vinh 200,000 USD/month for 8 months.

Duong confessed to giving Mr. Vinh 150,000 USD in Tet money (Tet 2013: 20,000 USD; 2014: 100,000 USD; 2015: 20,000 USD; 2016: 10,000 USD) and a Rolex watch worth 7,000 USD.

In addition, Duong organized many birthday parties for Mr. Vinh, always bringing foreign wine to drink (there were bottles of Macallan foreign wine worth 100 million VND).

Then, when returning from abroad, Duong bought shirts for Mr. Vinh, each worth from 100 USD or more; Many times when entertaining guests, Phan Van Vinh participated and the cost was up to over 10 billion VND.

Up to now, both Mr. Hoa and Mr. Vinh have not admitted and the Investigation Police do not have enough evidence to prove it, so they will separate them and consider handling them later when there is enough evidence.

In court, defendant Phan Van Vinh said that he has been passionate about bonsai for 30 years, and that he bought some bonsai for up to 10 billion VND. During that time, he also interacted with and bought bonsai with many people.

And for the watch worth 7,000 USD received from Nguyen Van Duong, Mr. Hoa paid 1.1 billion VND in cash to the former Chairman of CNC Board of Directors. “The defendant did not use his salary to buy the watch. That was the money from selling ornamental plants” - defendant Phan Van Vinh affirmed.