On the sidelines of an NA session, the Justice Committee’s chairwoman said that the committee may review an eight-year prison sentence meted out to elderly labour hero Tran Ngoc Suong.
 |  |
| Ba Suong received the Labour Hero title in 1999 and at the trial in August 2009.< /> | |
Ex-farm boss on slush-fund charge
Tran Ngoc Suong, 60, former director of the state-owned Song Hau Cooperative Farm near Can Tho City, was sentenced to eight years in jail for running an illegal fund on November 19. Suong was also ordered by the city People’s Court to repay some 4.3 billion dong (US$240,500) to the government. The decision upheld a verdict reached by a lower court in August.
Suong maintained her innocence to the end. The case has been widely reported in the Vietnamese press and attracted public attention and concern. Public Security Minister Le Hong Anh announced on 23 November that his ministry will review the entire investigation process and has instructed the Can Tho police to send it all details immediately.
National Assembly Justice Committee Chairwoman Le Thi Thu Ba told VietNamNet that she and the committee are paying special attention to this case.
Suong’s lawyer Nguyen Truong Thanh said he would petition higher court officials for clemency. Chairman Thu Ba said that the committee would wait to see the answer from the presiding judge of the People’s Supreme Court and the chief of the People’s Supreme Procuracy.
She said if the two agencies don’t protest against the verdict and the public opinion still doesn’t agree with the verdict, her committee may set up a supervisory group.
“Personally, I admire and love her (Tran Ngoc Suong) but as the chairwoman of the NA’s Committee for Justice, I cannot comment because I don’t read the case records yet and I don’t have much official information,” Thu Ba said.
The Vietnam Fatherland Front’s Central Committee has also asked high officials of the justice system to re consider the verdict. According to the Front, in this case, the court should consider the change of economic management mechanism and the public opinion.
Previously, former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh also told VietNamNet that an eight year jail sentence for the elderly and ailing Suong was too harsh punishment for the Labor Hero title holder. She said Suong devoted her whole life to improving the lives of local farmers and her sentencing was “unfair”.
 |
Party Chief Do Muoi visited the Song Hau Farm in January 1996. |
Binh said what has been called a slush fund was actually a welfare fund for one of Vietnam’s most successful collective farms. “Suong maintained the fund but not for her personal benefit,” Binh stressed.
According to Suong’s lawyer Nguyen Dang Trung, the fund was set up 30 years ago, before the doi moi reforms and long before her term as head of the state-run farm from 2001 to 2007, and was usedand was used to help collective members in need. The court on November 19, however, declared that it was illegal for the state-run farm collective to maintain any funds off-the-books.
Suong was named a Labor Hero by the government in 2000 and was honored with an International Federation of Business & Professional Women’s “Women Inspire” Awards in 2002.
 |
Chairman of Can Tho City presented the second Labour Hero title to the Song Hau Farm in 1999. |
Some 110 members of the collective farm have reportedly written to the Party Unit in Can Tho City expressing their readiness to serve jail time in Suong’s place. Unit Deputy Chief Pham Thanh Van said authorities are verifying the authenticity of the letter to make sure the farmers wrote it of their own accord.
Many Song Hau farmers entered the collective landless and with few prospects, and have since grown prosperous. A few of these, however, have protested Suong’s sentencing in August as too lenient.
 |
| Song Hau Farm in the early days. |
The case in brief
Tran Ngoc Suong was found guilty of instructing subordinates to divert more than nine billion dong (currently equivalent to $562,000) into an off the-books fund while she was chairman of the Song Hau Farm from 2001-2007.
According to prosecutors, the slush fund was established with money made selling Song Hau Farm property and land. But the profits were not accounted for, nor were they taxed as the sales were not recorded.
 |
Ba Suong and her father, Mr. Nam Hoang (standing) took the meal in a cranky house in the initial period of Song Hau Farm. |
Suong’s defense attorneys argued that she ‘inherited’ a fund established by her father Tran Ngoc Hoang, who ran the collective farm from 1994 until he died in 2000.
The court found that the fund had grown to more than 20 billion dong ($1,180,000) by the time Suong and the four other officials were prosecuted last September. Farm deputy director Truong Hong Nhung and chief accountant Dang The Quoc Hung received six and four year sentences respectively.
 |
Mr. Nam Hoang, Ba Suong’s father, who was always in the bare feet even when he welcomed state leaders. |
The fund had been used to buy houses and gifts for Suong as well as other unauthorized expenses, the verdict said, adding that some 5.6 billion dong in state funds had been misappropriated. The court proposed additional investigations into allegations that Suong had embezzled more than one billion dong from the fund for her personal use.
‘Ba Suong’s’ glory and sorrow Life has become bitter for Tran Ngoc Suong, the former Labour Hero, widely praised for her devotion to the Song Hau farm. Suong was not healthy enough to stand behind the bar at the appeals court on November 19.
“I’ve lived with Song Hau Farm and its farmers for over 30 years. Now I have nothing! No husband, no children, no house. This house belongs to my relatives. I have to stay here to pursue justice. Where can I find the billions of dong the court says I must pay? With my heart disease, I wonder if I can appeal for justice much longer,” Suong said, sitting next to a pile of documents and some photos taken with her late father and Song Hau farm’s farmers. At the age of 16, Suong won the first prize in a provincial contest for women. Good at sewing, cooking and flower arrangement, she might have been a good wife and mother but her life went to a different way. She entered the Can Tho Agriculture University.
“I grew up in a farm family. My father transmitted his love of land and water to me. After a period of time working for the Song Hau Farm, I went to the USSR to study economic management. I was determined to return to build Song Hau Farm into a model farm,” she said. At the beginning, the Song Hau Farm, managed by Suong’s father, had only 16 people, but 3450 hectares of poor, degraded soil, 10 tractors bought on credit and some money borrowed from the local department of war invalids and social affairs to buy food for workers.
Returning from the former USSR, Ba Suong took her father’s place as the director of the Song Hau Farm. She managed everything from irrigation, transport, land improvement and agricultural processing to marketing and the welfare of her farm families.
Largely due to her management, the wild land where rice couldn’t grow became an outstanding farm, a much-visited and studied model of new rural economy. The strong and fast changes at Song Hau Farm brought ‘Ba Suong’ to glory. Like her father, she was honored as a Labour Hero. Suong was the first Vietnamese woman to received the title “Outstanding Woman of Asia-Pacific”. And now she has been sentenced to spend years in jail and pay 4.3 billion dong in compensation! |
VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
