Two ex-newspaper editors arrested in Vietnam in anti-graft sweep

HANOI: Two former editors-inchief of a prominent state-run newspaper in Vietnam were arrested Tuesday, police said, as the pace of the country’s largestever crackdown on corruption quickens.

The anti-graft drive, led by powerful Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, has swept through the party, police, business and armed forces.

On Tuesday, police in the southern economic hub Ho Chi Minh city arrested Nguyen Cong Khe, chief editor of Thanh Nien newspaper between 1988 and 2008, and Nguyen Quang Thong, his successor, who left in 2021.

The two were accused of “violating regulations on the management and use of state assets, causing losses and wastefulness,” police said in a public announcement.

Their offices and residences were searched, police added.

Media reports said the two had turned a large plot of land — which was due to be used for the construction of a headquarters for Thanh Nien newspaper — into a high-rise accommodating offices, a shopping mall and residential apartments.

The deal caused losses to the state, the media reports said, without elaborating.

Vietnam has seen a spate of corruption-related arrests and trials of officials and business people in recent months.

Since 2021, more than 3,500 people have been indicted across more than 1,300 graft cases.

A former health minister was last week jailed for 18 years while dozens of other health officials and business people were imprisoned for their roles in selling overpriced Covid-19 test kits. Thanh Nien newspaper is among Vietnam’s most influential newspapers, with more than 400,000 copies sold daily.