Truong Chau Huu Danh and the group 'Bao Sach' repeatedly posted articles with false information.

In the newly issued indictment, the People's Procuracy of Thoi Lai district, Can Tho city prosecuted Truong Chau Huu Danh (39 years old), Nguyen Thanh Nha (41 years old), Doan Kien Giang (36 years old), Nguyen Phuoc Trung Bao (39 years old) and Le The Thang (39 years old) for the crime of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State and the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.

Defendant Truong Chau Huu Danh. Photo: Provided by the police

According to the accusation, in March 2020, Truong Chau Huu Danh went to Thoi Thuan B hamlet, Thoi Lai town, Thoi Lai district to meet Nguyen Hoang Trung Kien (residing locally) and a number of households affected by the "Thoi Lai New Urban Area Project", invested by Cadif Can Tho Design Consulting Joint Stock Company.

Truong Chau Huu Danh claimed to be a journalist who came to collect information and write articles to protect the rights of the people. Taking advantage of the time when some people were upset due to being affected by the project, Truong Chau Huu Danh wrote 32 articles and posted 29 clips on Facebook and Truong Chau Huu Danh's Fanpage.

According to the appraisal results of the authorities of Can Tho City, the articles and videos made by Truong Chau Huu Danh affected the role of state management in the locality, caused confusion, suspicion, destabilized the ideology and trust of the people, and created instability in society...

Truong Chau Huu Danh's actions also damaged the reputation, honor, and dignity of leaders of agencies and political and social organizations at all levels. They also caused people to lose trust in the leadership team of the Party, State, and local government...

In addition, Truong Chau Huu Danh also wrote and posted on Facebook 49 articles related to organizations and individuals in many other localities, attracting many likes, comments, and shares.

Create group "Clean Newspaper"

In addition to independently using his personal Facebook to commit the violation, in August 2019, Truong Chau Huu Danh, Bao, Nha, Thang, Giang and two others created the Fanpage “Sweet Newspaper” and the group “Making Clean Newspaper”. Trung Bao was the one who created the Fanpage “Sweet Newspaper”. About a month later, members suggested changing the name to “Sweet Newspaper”.

The first article of “Sweet Newspaper” about the incident related to Asanzo Company, in the direction of defending Asanzo. It was the articles about Asanzo that caused internal conflicts within the “Sweet Newspaper” group. Two members automatically left “Sweet Newspaper”.

From here, “Sweet Newspaper” has 5 members left, in which, Trung Bao and Truong Chau Huu Danh hold the role of administrator, the rest hold the right of editor. All 5 members have the right to post articles on “Sweet Newspaper”.

To unify the topics and content of the posts on the Fanpage, Truong Chau Huu Danh and other members created chat groups for discussion. In addition, these defendants also created a group called “Making Clean Newspapers”, in which they added one more member as administrator.

Members of the group "Clean Newspaper".

The “Sweet Newspaper” fanpage posted a total of 47 articles, of which 26 were discussed and agreed upon by members before posting. The “Sweet Newspaper” fanpage posted many articles related to hot issues of public interest such as the Ho Duy Hai case, Ton Duc Thang University, forced eviction at Gia Trang Quan, etc.

Upon hearing the news that Huu Danh was arrested by Can Tho City Police, the group members automatically left the group. Thang was the one who directly deleted the Fanpage “Bao Sach”.

Continue to investigate signs of intentional disclosure of state secrets

According to the indictment, the defendants in the case, through the operation of the "Clean Newspaper" website, received money to do communications and advertising for 8 businesses and partners in many different localities, totaling more than 2.8 billion VND.

Of which, Truong Chau Huu Danh benefited about 300 million; Bao received about 410 million; Kien Giang benefited 250 million; Nha 245 million and Thang benefited about 260 million VND. In addition, Bao also kept 500 million VND from a media contract for a corporation that had not been distributed to the members of the "Sach Newspaper" group.

Due to the expiration of the investigation period, the investigation agency has only been able to work with 2/8 related businesses and individuals. The investigation agency affirmed that it will continue to verify and clarify the remaining businesses. If there are signs of crime, it will prosecute, investigate and handle them.

For some documents stamped "confidential" and "top secret", there are signs of intentional crime.reveal state secrets; crime of appropriating, buying, selling or destroying state secret objects or documents", due to the complexity of the case, the investigation agency separated it to continue verifying and clarifying, if there is a basis, it will initiate investigation and handle it in another case.

The People's Procuracy accused Truong Chau Huu Danh and the defendants in this case of abusing freedom of speech and freedom of the press to write, post articles, videos, and use unverified, untrue, negative, and one-sided information to post and publicly disseminate on Facebook and Youtube.

The defendants' actions aimed to direct public opinion according to subjective consciousness, causing readers to misunderstand and misunderstand the truth, creating conditions for elements to take advantage of and participate in negative comments, inciting and attracting a segment of people with distorted perceptions to participate in opposing the Party's guidelines and policies and the State's policies and laws.

“The actions of the defendants directly infringed upon the interests of the State, affected the role of national management and state management in localities, caused confusion, suspicion, destabilized people's trust, and created social instability…”, the indictment stated.