Vietnam official criticised over gold leaf steak
A POWERFUL Communist Party official, tipped as a possible future leader of Vietnam, appears to have been caught eating a gold leaf-covered steak costing up to £1,450 – prompting outrage in the poverty-stricken south-east Asian country.
A video posted online appears to show To Lam, the minister of public security – whose agency deals with the monitoring of dissent and surveillance of activists in the authoritarian state – being hand-fed a hunk of meat at Nusr-et steakhouse in Knightsbridge.
Nusr-et, named after Turkish chef Nusret Gokce – known to his nearly 40 million Instagram followers as Salt Bae – serves up steaks wrapped in edible 24-carat gold leaf.
David Beckham, Leonardo Dicaprio, Naomi Campbell – and now it seems the 64-year-old Mr Lam – have been among the visitors to the steakhouse’s branches across the world.
The senior Communist Party official was in the UK for the Cop26 climate summit and met Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on Monday.
The clip was originally posted by the restaurant before being removed but it had already spread across Tiktok and Facebook in Vietnam by yesterday.
Many of those posting were angry about the decadence on display while the country struggles in the aftermath of a devastating wave of Covid that has cost countless jobs and caused the heaviest contraction in Vietnam’s GDP on record.
One social media user asked: “Where did he get the money? His annual salary can’t afford that meal!” According to Radio Free Asia, Mr Lam’s salary stands at around £500 a month.
A member of Vietnam’s powerful 18-strong politburo, he has been the public security minister since 2016 and has taken a hard line on human rights movements in the communist country.
Three years ago, Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, was criticised for eating at a branch of the same restaurant group in Turkey.