The 'official career' of the former General Director of Oceanbank and the way of spending 'free money'

In addition to the mastermind role of Ha Van Tham, former General Director of Oceanbank Nguyen Xuan Son is a person who has great influence on the activities of this bank.

The trial of the major economic case that occurred at Ocean Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Oceanbank) has been going on for 5 days. In this major case, former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Oceanbank Ha Van Tham and his accomplices, who are his subordinates, committed many violations in credit activities, causing losses to the bank of nearly 2,000 billion VND.

Defendant Nguyen Xuan Son at trial.

In addition to the mastermind role of Ha Van Tham, another person who has a great influence on Oceanbank's activities is Nguyen Xuan Son (born in 1962, from Ha Tinh; currently living in Nam Thang Long Urban Area, Tay Ho District, Hanoi), former General Director of Oceanbank, who was prosecuted for three crimes: embezzlement of property, abuse of position and power to appropriate property and intentionally violating State regulations on economic management causing serious consequences. He was accused of taking advantage of his assigned position, issuing, organizing and directing illegal activities to appropriate more than 246 billion VND.

Following the trial of this major case, we saw that Nguyen Xuan Son's career path was too fast and the way he received and spent money was really scary.

Oceanbank has more than 1,000 shareholders with Ha Van Tham as Chairman of the Board of Directors. At the end of 2008, the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PVN) signed an agreement with Oceanbank and became a shareholder, contributing 20% ​​of the charter capital to this bank, thereby appointing Nguyen Xuan Son to join the bank's Board of Directors, concurrently holding the position of General Director of Oceanbank.

In early 2009, when Tham discussed and exchanged about raising capital for Oceanbank, with the position of a person sent by a large corporation to be a strategic partner to participate in the Board of Directors and manage the bank, Son proactively asked Tham to pay an additional "customer care" fee in addition to the deposit interest rate stipulated in the contract for the amount of money mobilized from PVN member units.

Son had full authority to decide on this amount without having to discuss with anyone. Because Oceanbank was small in scale and had difficulty competing in raising capital, Tham agreed to Son's proposal. To have a source of money to "take care of customers" as requested by Son, Tham used BSC Vietnam Joint Stock Company (abbreviated as BSC Company) established by Tham in 2008 to sign service contracts for customers who needed to borrow capital from Oceanbank to collect fees.

With Tham's consent, Son directed Oceanbank Deputy General Director Nguyen Minh Thu, in charge of the Capital Resources Division, to collect additional fees outside the exchange rate as stipulated in the foreign currency sales contract to customers by requiring customers to sign service contracts with BSC Company to create additional revenue as requested and appropriated nearly 69 billion VND. At the trial, Son admitted that he received this amount from Tham and that Tham's subordinates transferred it to him from BSC Company. But Son justified that "The defendant thought it was Tham's money, not Oceanbank's money".

One of the large enterprises that deposited money at Oceanbank was the Vietnam-Russia Oil and Gas Joint Venture (Vietsovpetro). At the time, this enterprise deposited the most money at Oceanbank, it was more than 100 million USD (about 2,000 billion VND). Son stated that for this enterprise alone, the defendant directly gave money to the Chief Accountant, Vo Quang Huy, and General Director, Nguyen Huu Tuyen, about 10 times, each time from 10 to 20 thousand USD or from 200 to 300 million VND. Other large enterprises that were major customers also deposited from 1,000 to 1,500 billion VND, and were all "taken care of" very carefully by Oceanbank. Because of this testimony of Son, the panel of judges requested to summon Mr. Huy and Mr. Tuyen to court for confrontation.

During the past 5 days of trial, every time the panel of judges questioned how he spent the huge sums of money from Oceanbank, defendant Son always stated that he had spent this much money and gifts on this or that man or woman who was an official or a business. He stated that, but Nguyen Xuan Son could not prove it, saying: "It is too difficult for the court to ask the defendant to prove that the money was given as a gift. You give gifts and money, but how can you ask the recipient to sign and confirm it?"

The presiding judge asked, “The indictment determined that the defendant took advantage of his assigned position to issue, organize and direct illegal activities to appropriate more than 246 billion VND. So was all of this money given away as gifts?” Nguyen Xuan Son replied, “There were also other expenses, but it is very difficult to account for them in accounting documents.” After causing great economic damage to Oceanbank, defendant Son was appointed to the position of Deputy General Director of PVN. It was thought that when he took up his new position, he would no longer participate in Oceanbank’s activities, but in reality, that was not the case.

When Nguyen Xuan Son was appointed to a new position, it was also the time when Deputy General Director Nguyen Minh Thu took over the position of General Director of Oceanbank. From the beginning of 2011 to the end of 2014, following the direction of Ha Van Tham, Thu directly directed the functional departments of Oceanbank Headquarters and the Directors of Oceanbank branches and transaction offices to pay interest outside of capital mobilization to customers for deposits that were contrary to the regulations on capital mobilization interest rate ceilings prescribed by the State Bank from time to time with a total amount of about 540 billion VND.

Thu confessed, “At this time, following Son’s work handover and instructions, the defendant directly approved, received and paid interest on more than 125 billion VND in term and non-term deposits for customers belonging to the PVN Group led by Nguyen Xuan Son. Because the group of PVN customers depositing money at Oceanbank was very large, the defendant could not help but listen to Son’s opinion.”

Nguyen Xuan Son, from the position of General Director of Vietnam Oil and Gas Finance Company (PVFC), at the end of 2008, signed an agreement with Oceanbank and became a shareholder, strategic partner, contributing 20% ​​of charter capital to Oceanbank. After that, Son was introduced by PVN to become a member of the Board of Directors and was appointed by the Board of Directors of Oceanbank as General Director of Oceanbank from the beginning of 2009 to the end of 2010.

Resigning from Oceanbank, Son was appointed Deputy General Director of PVN and then Chairman of the Board of Members of PVN. When Son transferred to PVN to take up his new position, the person who succeeded him as General Director of Oceanbank, Nguyen Minh Thu, was Son's former subordinate from the time he worked at PVFC (a member unit of PVN) when Thu successively held positions from specialist to department head.

It can be seen that it was not only when Thu moved to work at Oceanbank that she became Nguyen Xuan Son's assistant, but the superior-subordinate relationship between them had been strengthened since their time at PVFC. Serious violations in the management and operation of Oceanbank were the direct cause of the famous trio of Oceanbank, Ha Van Tham - Nguyen Xuan Son and Nguyen Minh Thu, being imprisoned.

Before working in the Oil and Gas industry, then moving to Oceanbank and returning to become the top leader of the Oil and Gas industry, Nguyen Xuan Son graduated from the University of South Carolina (USA), majoring in Business Administration, postgraduate level; National Economics University, majoring in Pricing and the Oil and Gas Staff Training School./.

According to People's Police