HANOI – Vietnam dismissed two deputy prime ministers amid lengthy investigations driven by a campaign to clean up corruption and protect the Communist Party’s legitimacy.

The National Assembly voted to dismiss Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam from office during a four-day special session that began on Thursday. Mr Pham Binh Minh, who has held the position since late 2013, was also voted out.

The Parliament did not provide reasons for the dismissals. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh earlier on Thursday asked the National Assembly to dismiss Mr Dam and Mr Minh at their requests, VnExpress news website reported.

Of the 484 delegates who voted, 476 approved the dismissals and three did not vote, according to a tally provided by the National Assembly.

Delegates also voted to approve Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha, 59, and head of the Haiphong provincial Communist Party Tran Luu Quang, 55, to replace Mr Dam and Mr Minh.

Party officials in September stepped up efforts to prod officials to resign if they have been reprimanded, disciplined and are deemed to have low competency. Party Chief Nguyen Phu Trong has also urged timely dismissals of officials who have not been effective in their roles or have committed wrongdoings.

The dismissals come as the authorities aggressively tackle graft as part of a years-long campaign that has ensnared hundreds of officials and businessmen. The probes have defined Mr Trong’s legacy as he serves a rare third five-year term.

There were signs that this was coming for the two top-ranking officials. Late in December, the two were dismissed from the powerful party Central Committee. Mr Minh, a former foreign minister, was also dismissed from the Politburo, which plays a leading role in the country’s governance. The dismissals came at their requests, Thanh Nien newspaper reported earlier. 

Police recently detained Mr Dam’s assistant on alleged abuse of power amid investigations involving Viet A Technology JSC, a maker of Covid-19 test kits. The authorities in September also detained Nguyen Quang Linh, an assistant of Mr Minh’s, and Nguyen Thanh Hai, director of the department of international relations under the government’s coordinating office, for alleged bribery tied to the organisation of repatriation flights for Vietnamese abroad during the pandemic. The authorities have begun criminal proceedings against 39 individuals tied to the case.

Criminal proceedings have been initiated against 102 individuals tied to the Viet A Technology case. In June, police detained former health minister Nguyen Thanh Long, former Hanoi mayor Chu Ngoc Anh, and a former deputy minister of science and technology for alleged ties to bribery and abuse of power in investigations involving the test kit maker.

Mr Trong has warned that corruption could put the party’s legitimacy at risk as the public grows more intolerant of graft – echoing President Xi Jinping in neighbouring China. In one of the biggest cases to date, former Vietnam politburo member Dinh La Thang was sentenced in 2018 to 18 years in prison for violating state regulations.

Vietnam, a country of roughly 100 million people, also has much to gain economically if it can bolster its image as place to do business. 

During a corruption standing committee meeting on Nov 18, Mr Trong pointed to slow progress in handling some major graft cases and called for stronger actions to be taken, according to his speech posted on the government’s website.  

In 2022, the authorities initiated criminal investigations of 4,646 individuals in 2,474 cases for alleged violations tied to corruption, abuse of power and economic wrongdoings. Since early 2021, the Politburo and the party have disciplined 67 officials under the management of the Politburo and the Secretariat, including five ministers and former ministers, 13 provincial chairmen and former chairmen and 20 lower-level officers.

In April, police detained Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister To Anh Dung over alleged bribery while he organised repatriation flights for Vietnamese abroad during the pandemic. BLOOMBERG

The facts surrounding Honeywell’s bribery schemes in Brazil and Algeria are fairly straightforward.  In Brazil, the facts underscore the significant risks of bribery when companies participate in large, valuable project competitions.  Global companies face significant risks when competing and seek every advantage to win a project competition.

Brazil

In 2008 and 2009, Petrobras developed the Premium Refinery project to design and construct two grassroots refineries to process heavy oil in Maranhão and Cerá, Brazil. The project had three bidding phases: technical ranking, design competition and commercial valuation.  Honeywell was interested in the project as an important foothold in the Brazil oil industry.

In July 2009, Petrobras invited Honeywell UOP and a number of competitors to participate in the first phase.  The companies submitted technical proposals for the project.  UOP and two other companies received the highest technical scores and all three companies were permitted to participate in the second phase.

In April 2010, Honeywell searched for a sales intermediary to assist in the Premium project bid.  Honeywell executives believed they needed higher-level contacts at Petrobras to win the contract.   Honeywell’s account manager recommended a Brazil agent because the agent stated he had access to Petrobras’s downstream director responsible for the Premium project.

Honeywell officials submitted an internal request for approval to retain the agent and specifically represented that the agent would receive a 3 percent commission (or $12 million) if successful.  The request falsely represented that the Honeywell officials knew the agent for two years and omitted the fact the agent would interact with Petrobras officials.

In May and August 2010, the agent and Honeywell’s Petrobras account manager met with a Brazilian lobbyist with close ties to Petrobras’s downstream director.  Honeywell’s account manager offered the Brazilian lobbyist and Petrobras’s downstream director a portion of the sales commission (3 percent) in exchange for helping Honeywell win the Premium contract.

In a subsequent meeting, Honeywell’s account manager met with the Petrobras downstream director and the lobbyist at a shopping mall in Rio de Janeiro and they agreed that the Petrobras director would assist Honeywell win the contract in exchange for a percentage of the commission.

Honeywell secured the lead in the design context and the bidders prepared to submit their commercial proposals.  Honeywell’s account manager updated his supervisors on meetings he conducted with the Petrobras director, the lobbyist and the sales agent in which he and the agent sought information on what to bid to win the commercial phase.  The Honeywell account manager and his supervisors referred to Petrobras’s director as the “King” and the lobbyist as the “King’s assistant.”

Honeywell submitted a commercial bid of $425 million.  A Petrobras lower level official rejected the bid as too high. Honeywell sought to get the “King” to intervene and get the “decisions up to his level in order to control.”  Inb August 2010 Honeywell’s regional director pressured his supervisors to execute the sales agent agreement stating, “I want to get this back to [the sales agent] as soon as possible, because we are pushing the king to step up and intercede.”  That same day, Honeywell submitted a revised commercial bid of $348 million to Petrobras based on specific guidance provided by the Petrobras director.  Petrobras accepted the bid and Honeywell won the contract.

Honeywell paid the sales agent a total of $10.4 million in commissions from a U.S. bank account.  The payments were made without receipt of an invoice from the sale agent.  The payment requests lacked basic relevant information.  Later, the sales agent wanted his commission payments routed to a Swiss bank account in a different name associated with the sales agent’s new company.

Algeria

In November 2004, Honeywell Belgium contracted with Sonatrach, Algeria’s state-owned oil company to modernize the instrumentation and control systems at a refinery in Oran, Algeria.  In 2008, Honeywell renegotiated the contract.  One year later, Honeywell and Sonatrach had a dispute concerning the contract and all work ceased on the project. Sonatrach believed that Honeywell Belgium should pay liquidated damages for the delay. Sonatrach’s downstream director was a key decision maker in the resolution of the dispute.

Starting in 2010, Honeywell Belgium retained a Monaco sales agent, who was subjected to due diligence review and approved.  Honeywell used the sales agent to help resolve the liquidated damages dispute.  Honeywell then used the sales agent to pass through various payments to a group of people who helped Honeywell secure a contract with Sonatrach.  The Monaco sales agent understood this to mean the payment as possibly a bribe.

Later, in 2011, a Honeywell sales manager engaged a consultant to help resolve the problems Honeywell was having with Sonatrach.  The consultant made two separate payments to the Sonatrach official, $50,000 and $25,000, respectively, from a Swiss bank account.

Sonatrach and Honeywell Belgium continued to disagree about the contract in Algeria.  Sonatrach threatened to transfer the contract to another company.  After making the first $50,000 payment to the Sonatrach official, Honeywell and Sonatrach agreed to modify the contract and resolve their dispute.

Two weeks later, the Monaco sales agent and a Honeywell subsidiary entered into a fictitious sales consultancy agreement where the agent would purportedly promote sales in Algeria for a 2 to 4.5 percent commission (capped at $500,000 per year).  Despite not achieving any of the contractual milestones, the Monaco sales agent was paid $300,000.

The Monaco sales agent was paid to reimburse the consultant who made the two bribery payments to the Sonatrach director.  The Monaco sales agent sent an invoice to Honeywell for a lump sum fee of $300,000 relating to the refinery project. Honeywell approved the invoice payment.  The sales agent, in turn, repaid the consultant the $75,000 through a series of intermediary transfers involving multiple U.S. correspondent banks located in New York.

GOP wants to investigate Hunter Biden, Mayorkas, and the IRS. First they have to agree on a speaker.

Joseph Simonson • January 4, 2023 6:00 pm

Subpoenaing Hunter Biden, impeaching Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and stopping President Joe Biden’s plan to hire thousands of IRS agents. These big ticket items were supposed to be priorities in the House agenda, but after taking power following two years of full Democratic control of the government, Republicans’ plans could be delayed for weeks, months, or indefinitely, as the party fails to find a speaker of the House.

The chaos in the Capitol is stirring ire among House Republicans, the vast majority of whom support Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) for the role. Republican members who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon said they were powerless to do just about anything, such as fulfilling basic constituent services or setting staff up with emails. 

“If we had elected Kevin McCarthy speaker we would have already voted to defund the 87,000 new IRS agents, new border security measures, and a select committee on China,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) told the Free Beacon. “We would also be sending notices to the Biden administration that we’re coming for answers on the FBI, Department of Justice, the Afghanistan withdrawal, and conflicts of interest surrounding the Biden family.”

Without a House speaker, the legislative body grinds to a halt. No members can be sworn in, introduce legislation, or issue subpoenas. For all intents and purposes, the United States currently doesn’t have a House of Representatives. But the failure to find a House speaker carries political consequences as well. The longer the fight drags on, the longer Biden, who is expected to run for reelection in 2024, goes without virtually any real oversight in the form of hearings and subpoenas. 

Congress has proven itself effective at inflicting damage on a president or future candidate, as evidenced by investigations into Hillary Clinton and former president Donald Trump. Clinton faced over a year of scrutiny from House Republicans for her role in the Benghazi attacks as secretary of state and her use of a private email server to conduct professional business, which only ended after she lost her second bid for president in 2016. Democrats spent nearly four years investigating Trump over every facet of his administration, resulting in two impeachments and a failed reelection campaign.

Democrats, who told voters on the campaign trail that a Republican majority would mean few bills would get passed as they investigate Hunter Biden, and Republicans agree that oversight would be a chief priority in the new Congress. One senior staffer close to the Republican Oversight Committee said members had a day-by-day plan on various Biden administration officials they planned to subpoena. That project, which was to be publicly announced on Tuesday, is now on hold.

“The people who are voting against Kevin McCarthy in the Republican conference are aiding Joe Biden, aiding [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries, and aiding [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer. Because they are the reason we are not getting about the business we set out to do,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.) on Fox News on Wednesday. “When it comes to Jim Jordan’s oversight on [the Judiciary Committee], guess what? Can’t do it, because of these folks. When it comes to securing our border, guess what? Can’t do it, because of these folks. When it comes to reining in wasteful spending under the Biden administration, guess what? Can’t do it, because of these folks.”

The Republican Party’s inability to find a speaker does not look like it will be resolved any time soon. One individual close to the negotiations, who identifies as a neutral party and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the anti-McCarthy voting bloc’s demands are untenable.

“What [Rep. Matt] Gaetz is asking for isn’t really possible if you want a functioning House,” the individual said. “McCarthy has to give everything away to make these people happy.”

The anti-McCarthy group of Republicans has made a number of demands, some publicly and others in backroom negotiations. Those demands include a vote on a number of bills including a balanced budget amendment and term limits. Rule change demands include requiring a two-thirds majority vote for all earmarks, committee spots, and a pledge from the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, not to meddle in primaries.