Bolsavik.com

An executive in an export company accused of bribing Vietnamese government officials (see Bolsavik’s previous report here) has pleaded guilty.

Joseph T. Lukas, 60, a former partner in Nexus Technologies Inc., yesterday pleaded guilty to bribing Vietnamese government officials in exchange for lucrative contracts to supply equipment and technology.

Lukas is the only non-Viet who was indicted in the case. The other defendants are Nam Quoc Nguyen, 53; Kim Anh Nguyen, 40; and An Quoc Nguyen, 33, who are all each other’s siblings.

According to the FBI’s press release here, Lukas admitted that:

from 1999 to 2005, he and other employees of Nexus Technologies Inc. agreed to pay, and knowingly paid, bribes to Vietnamese government officials in exchange for contracts with the agencies for which the officials worked. The bribes were falsely described as “commissions” in the company’s records.

The company specializes in big-ticket, high-value, high-technology items: underwater mapping equipment, bomb containment equipment, helicopter parts, chemical detectors, satllite communication parts, and air tracking systems.

They are accused of providing bribes to some of the top state-owned enterprises of Vietnam: VietSov Petro, PetroVietnam Gas Company, Vung Tau Airport, Southern Flight Management Center, and a tourism and trading company that allegedly belongs the Ministry of Public Safety - i.e., the police.

Read the rest of this entry »

A pianist some consider the best Viet pianist of her generation is scheduled to perform at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in Massachussetts this weekend.

Up-and-coming Quynh Nguyen (Nguyễn Thúy Quỳnh in Vietnamese spelling), currently based in New York City, is slated to perform the Piano Quintet in F Minor by Cesar Franck with the the Biava Quartet, at 8pm on June 27. See the Festival’s web site here.

Back in 2001 or 2002, the Bolsavik was talking with Dang Thai Son, the first Asian to ever win the Chopin International Piano Competition - and asked him about the next generation of Vietnamese piano performers.

And Dang Thai Son said, in his opinion, the next great Vietnamese hope for a world-class pianist is none other than Quynh Nguyen.

Read the rest of this entry »

A mega gathering of Viet creatives is taking place in New York City next weekend, hosted by thatsneaat, an Asian Art blog.

The one-day event, dubbed “Hay Qua!” - Vietnamese for, well, “That’s neat!” - brings together a wide array of talent, from music to fashion and food.

In the film area, guests include many filmmakers whose works have been shown at ViFF, including Doan Hoang, director of “Oh Saigon”; Ina Adele Ray, the director of “El Paso, Vietnam”; Kim Spurlock, director of “Buoi Chieu”; and Jared Rehberg, an associate producer of “Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam” who is himself one of the lifted babies featured in the award-winning documentary.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a little old but funny as heck. A Viet foot doctor has been accused of fraudulent billing for care not provided, including purported footcare for a patient whose feet had been amputated, reports local paper Belleville News-Democrat here.

Dr. David Quang Pham, a podiatrist in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, was arrested on June 12 on federal charges.

Dr. Pham was working in a nursing home, and he was regularly submitting bills to Medicare and Medicaid from 2002 to 2008 that allegedly include care for residents who had no feet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Six people, including three juveniles, were indicted in the killing of a Vietnamese market owner who was shot, allegedly to prevent him from testifying against the man accused of robbing his store, reports the San Francisco Chronicle here.

Tong Van Le, 44 (pictured), owner of the Nasser Market in San Francisco, was killed in September of last year, shot twice in the head with a rifle around 10:30 pm in his Lexus in the garage of his house in Novato, north of the city.

He had barely gotten home. His car’s engine was still running and the tail lights were still on when police, responding to neighbors’ 911 calls, arrived at the home.

It was the first killing in Novata in three years.

His wife and two children, 6 and 7 years old, were in the house but slept through the shooting.

The couple would have celebrated their 10th anniversary in December, said the Chronicle in its story published at that time, here.

Two weeks before his killing, Le’s store had been robbed. Le filed a police report but at the time had not heard anything yet.

Suspicion that the killing may be related to Le as a potential witness arose almost immediately. The Chronicle here quoted “sources close to the investigation” as saying police are focusing on whether Le’s report of the robbery led to his death.

Subsequent development appears to bear out that theory. Among the six suspects named in the murder case is the man suspected of the original robbery, Larry Brian Blay Jr., 19.

Read the rest of this entry »

The lawyer who wrote the bar association’s proclamation, asserting Vietnamese sovereignty over disputed islands off the country’s central coast, has been arrested by Vietnam’s government.

OK so this is not strictly a Vietnamese-American issue, but I felt compelled to speak out. This is, after all, my blog. (Note also that I’m not speaking in the third person.)

On Saturday, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, acting under what it called an “urgency,” arrested attorney Le Cong Dinh (Lê Công Định in Vietnamese spelling). The purported reason was for “acts against the State” and “libel of the Prime Minister and other comrades in the leadership of the Party and State.”

A closer reading of the news of his arrest, however, shows that the Vietnamese government could not even adequately allege, let alone prove, any of the charges. The same, almost identical “news story” appeared throughout the country’s media, all of which are owned directly or indirectly by the state. Here’s one sample.

Successful professional

Educated in Ha Noi, Saigon, and at Tulane University - Columbia, the 39-year-old Dinh is highly successful and wealthy. He owns a house in the exclusive Saigon South new development, and has his solo practice in the high-rent District 1 area. (It’s the Vietnamese equivalent of living in Westchester and working in Manhattan.)

Dinh is married to one of the prettiest and smartest women of Vietnam, beauty queen Ngọc Khánh. (That’s Dinh and his wife in the photo above.) In a country where most positions of prominence go to older men and women over 50, Dinh was elected the Vice-President of the Bar Association of Ho Chi Minh City, the umbrella organization for all lawyers in the 9-million-people metropolis.

And yet, he’s taking risks that a wealth-maximizing rational being would not take. In the restrictive and risky environment that is communist Vietnam, Dinh has dared gone against the grain, representing clients that other lawyers would not touch, and speaking out on issues that many others, lawyers or not, would not speak.

These taboo issues include the assertion of Vietnamese sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels, and also issues of human rights and religious freedom.

Represented activists

Among clients represented by Dinh are his colleagues Nguyen Van Dai and (Ms.) Le Thi Cong Nhan. Both are attorneys based in Hanoi, and they were most prominent as lawyers specializing in human rights, representing Christians, mostly Protestants, seeking the right to practice their faith. In the picture is Dai in suit in front and Cong Nhan in red behind him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just to update something that the Bolsavik mentioned before: The Vietnamese man who was accused by reality-TV star “Dog the Bounty Hunter” of shooting at him has been set free because there was no evidence he even so much as had a gun. On motion by the accused man’s attorney, the court has scheduled briefing on whether to order the DA to press false-reporting charges against the bounty hunter.

Duane Chapman, star of the above-named reality show on A&E Television, had accused the bail jumper he was chasing, Hoang Nguyen, 35, of shooting at him.

(At the right, on top is the booking photo of Hoang Nguyen published by TMZ. Below that is the booking photo of Chapman when he was arrested by Mexico’s police in 2003.)

As the Bolsavik reported here, at the time Chapman had the TV crew with him but they had no tape of the shooting.

Based on Chapman’s accusation, the police originally charged Nguyen with attempted homicide, even though they also said that “no gun was found on Hoang Nguyen’s person, and they’ve yet to find a bullet hole or shell casing at the scene.”

Lacking any solid evidence other than the words of a bounty hunter, the El Paso County DA had no choice but to let Nguyen go, reports TMZ here.

Nguyen’s public defender, however, would not rest at that.

He went after Chapman, filing a motion with the judge in the case to force the DA’s office to press charges against the bounty hunter for what he said was a blatant lie that led to his client’s murder charge.

Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of Finals Week - which Professor Bolsavik survived without losing life, limb, or sanity, thank you very much - here’s a heartfelt congratulations to all graduates of the Class of ‘09.

And, let’s take a look at local valedictorians.

“Local” means near the Bolsavik’s house in Little Saigon (he’s just parochial that way). The Bolsavik’s house is located in the Garden Grove Unified School District, which is the principal district serving the Little Saigon area.

There are 8 high schools in the Garden Grove USD, and from those schools 5 valedictorians and 6 salutatorians have recognizable Vietnamese family names.

Congratulations to all grads, and a special shout-out to the valedictorians and salutatorians for your achievement.

The list of GGUSD valedictorians and salutatorians follows the jump.

(If you’re not on the list - and not to take away anything from the top students or anything - don’t sweat it. You know the vast majority of successful people were not valedictorians or salutatorians of their high schools, right?)

Read the rest of this entry »

An allegedly vicious Vietnamese, but also allegedly not too smart, is facing a lifetime spent in state prison for a third-strike home invasion robbery for which he netted $100 cash.

Hung Trong Do, 31, of Stanton, is charged with several felony counts arising out of an incident in Irvine where Do barged into a house and tried to rob a woman who makes her living babysitting kids, according to a press release by the OCDA here. (Ah, the baby sitter millionaire next door.)

It was around noon on June 3, and the victim “Jane Doe” was sitting on the couch feeding one of the six children, age ranging from 6 months to 3 years, when Do came in through the garage door, brandished his gun, and demanded money.

In front of the toddlers, Do pressed the gun against the victim’s neck and walked her to the dining room area where he made her take money out of her purse, all of $100.

And then, in the middle of all this, the victim’s husband came home. (Apparently Do never checked out what kind of work hours the husband has. Ah, the half-unemployed millionaire next door.)

Read the rest of this entry »

A new film directed by Timothy Linh Bui is now available on DVD, reuniting Timothy with Oscar-winning star Forest Whitaker and Patrick Swayze, plus other big names such as Jessica Biel and Ray Liotta.

The film can be rented at Blockbuster or online on Netflix, and other places where movies are rented.

Timothy is, of course, the older of the Bui brothers that brought us Three Seasons and Green Dragon. It was on Green Dragon that Timothy first directed Whitaker and Swayze.

The film’s story, based on the oft-observed presmise that life is full of strange coincidences and serendipitous intersections, is co-written by Timothy and another Viet filmmaker, Stephane Gauger the director of Owl and the Sparrow. (Read more about Owl here and here.)

The four principal characters lead their separate, and desperate, lives — except for one guy, a mortician named after the typewriter keyboard (Qwerty), who’s strange but not desperate. These lives then intersect in the most extraordinary ways. If the Bolsavik were glib, he’d say this film is something like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams meets Crash.”

Read the rest of this entry »