Vietnam arrests former executive in widened graft crackdown

HANOI, Vietnam -- Police in Vietnam arrested the former chairman of a scandal-hit major state-owned conglomerate for alleged abuse of power as communist authorities step up their crackdown on graft.

The Ministry of Public Security said Nguyen Ngoc Su, the former chairman of Vietnam Shipbuilding Industrial Group, or Vinashin, is suspected of using Vinashin's money to deposit savings into the Ocean joint stock bank that allowed some company executives to appropriate $4.7 million in excessive interest.

Police are widening their investigation into the case, the ministry said in a statement Friday, a day after Su was taken into custody.

Abuse of power carries up to 15 years in prison.

Su was the former vice general director of state energy giant PetroVietnam before being appointed in 2010 to head Vinashin, which was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy over accumulated debts of $4.5 billion, or 4.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product at that time.

Vinashin's former chairman Pham Thanh Binh was sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating government regulations in 2012, while eight other senior executives were given from three to 19 years in the same trial.

The case had damaged the country's credit rating.

Scores of officials and bankers have been put on trial recently for economic crimes as authorities stepped up their crackdown on corruption under the watch of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who was reelected to another five-year term in 2016.

Vietnam's highest-profile graft trial wrapped up on Monday when Dinh La Thang, a former Politburo member and former chairman of PetroVietnam, was sentenced to 13 years in pr ison.

Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former chairman of PetroVietnam's construction arm PVC, who Germany says was kidnapped by Vietnamese agents in Berlin where he sought asylum, was given life imprisonment for embezzlement in the same trial that also includes 20 other defendants, most of them former oil executives.

Ocean Bank was taken over by the State Bank in 2015 at no cost after reported accumulated losses of $445 million.

The bank's general director was sentenced to death for embezzlement while its chairman was sentenced to life imprisonment on the same charges at a trial last year that also included 49 others, most of them Ocean Bank executives.

BENTON, Ky. -- The 15-year-old boy accused of gunning down classmates at a western Kentucky high school was ordered held on murder and assault charges as the shaken community where it happened strained to cope with the devastation.

On Thursday, a juvenile court judge found probable cause to keep detaining the teenager as authorities gather evidence to support trying him as an adult for the attack at Marshall County High School, Assistant Marshall County Attorney Jason Darnall said. Authorities, meanwhile, are seeking to gather evidence for a grand jury, hoping to discover why a handgun was turned on a crowd of classmates, all 14 to 18, as they waited for the morning bell Tuesday.

Although the legal process has begun for the suspect, others in the small rural community sought to overcome the shock of Tuesday's shooting that left two people dead and 18 injured with a show of solidarity. Hundreds gathered amid flickering candles after nightfall Thursday to honor the victims as many wept.

Nearly 300 people, many with faces visibly etched with pain, thronged a park as firefighters raised a large American flag in the crisp night air. Many teens, cupping candles in their palms, hugged and looked on somberly. One girl's candle shook in her hands as she sobbed, and others cried when another girl sang "Amazing Grace."

"It always happens somewhere else, you know, but this week it was our community," said Misti Drew, an organizer of the vigil. With faces aglow from the candles, participants lofted banners and some wore T-shirts embossed with the words, "Marshall Strong."

Earlier, Vicki Jo Reed painted a "Marshall Strong" sign on a storefront, and reflected on her grandson's close call.

"This is one of the hardest things for me to ever have to paint," she said. "Had a grandson that was in the commons area through the whole thing, and he, like all the other kids, is not handling it very good."

Reed said her grandson is also 15, like the shooting suspect and their two slain classmates, and is haunted by the horror he saw.

"He wakes up to the gunshots every morning," Reed said.

The mother of Bailey Nicole Holt, who died at the scene, said she got a call from her daughter's phone but couldn't hear her.