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.
According to the indictment, the amount of bribes was at least $150,000.
VietSov Petro, whose name dates back from the Cold War days when its partner was still called the Soviet Union, has a share in every oil and gas well drilled on Vietnam’s continental shelf.
PetroVietnam (in Vietnamese: Tập Đoàn Dầu Khí Quốc Gia Việt Nam) is the state-owned company that holds the monopoly on all things having to do with oil. Every drop of gasoline sold in the country must go through PetroVietnam. It is the named Vietnamese partner in VietSov. It also branches out into related and unrelated businesses, such as tourism, transportation, power generation, etc. Some have claimed that, behind the scene, the head of PetroVietnam is the most powerful man in the country. Its subsidiary PetroVietnam Gas (in Vietnamese: Tổng Công Ty Khí ) is the exclusive importer/distributor/wholesaler of natural gas.
The alleged corrupt dealings include:
* In 2000, Nexus paid some unknown amount of “commission” to a “supporter” within PetroVietnam Gas Company (PVGC).
* In 2001, they deducted part of the commission because the payment they got from PVGC was less than expected.
* Also in 2000, they paid 15% of some contract to someone at VietSov Petro. Lukas, apparently new to the bribing business, had to ask Nam how much commission was paid so he could record them in the books.
How much is 15%? In 2003, they got to sell more than $500,000 to VietSov Petro for a hydraulic jacking system. You do the math.
In 2006, they sold a wheel shot blast to VietSov Petro. It is not clear how much that cost, but the way they won the bid was to rig it, so that two other companies would submit higher bids, there would be 3 bids and theirs would be lowest and therefore win.
* In 2001, Lukas, apparently still not understanding how bribes work, sent Nam a breakdown of costs on a contract with Vung Tau Airport and asked Nam which portions need to be paid commission on. To which Nam responded the next day, well, duh, everything, that an airport official had “demand[ed] commissions” for all sales.
* In 2004, they wired commission payout to PVGC on some spare parts contract. Apparently someone didn’t wire fast enough, so from Vietnam Nam emailed his sister Kim Anh with an email marked “URGENT” telling her to wire the $9,798.40 “commission payout” “TODAY.”
* In 2004, they sold $14,000 of computer workstations to Southern Flight Management Center (in Vietnamese: Trung Tâm Quản Lý Bay Miền Nam), an air-traffic-control arm of Vietnam Airlines. In an email, Nam bragged to his siter Kim Anh: “SFMC could have bought this … equipment from a local dealer for cheaper than ours. But they agreed to buy from us since we can … agree for them to add into the contract a fat markup for themselves.”
* Also in 2004, they sold air traffic system equipment to Vung Tau Airport, and paid 10% of the contract in “commission.” They paid $18,854.
In 2006, they paid another $63,360 to a Vung Tau Airport official, also on the air traffic system contract.
Later that year, they paid the “2nd commission payment” of $14,200, to that same official.
* In 2005, for some safety equipment contract with the Ministry of Public Security company, they paid $21,872 to the official in charge. The grand jury quoted an email they sent to the official, in which they confirmed they had wired $22,325 to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong they would wire $21,872 to the official after deducting bank fees.
This is old news. To do business in Vietnam one must bribe everyone….it’s a dirty, corrupted system…every branch of government is corrupted, including all of the political officials at the top.
Fine them heavily .
@Marc L.:
I wouldn’t really blame it totally on the ‘system’…… IMO, the corruption is more due to the fact that Vietnam and Vietnamese people are still quite poor.
Vietnamese people want to make money (like most people) and some are willing to bend or break the rules to make more money.
Just look at all the stories of Vietnamese in America involved with graft and fraud. Granted these Vietnamese-Americans usually aren’t ‘poor’ but in those cases it is an issue of individual morals.
So in my opinion,
Graft by Vietnamese in Vietnam mostly comes from a combination of individual lack of morals, being poor and some of ‘the system’.
Graft by Vietnamese in America……. same reasons as above but being ‘poor’ and ‘the system’ are less significant factors and lack of morals is the most important factor.
Corruption exists in every government, including the US Government. It’s just that in the US, it’s not very obvious in bright daylight.
Here, it exists in the form of lobby and pork. Look at the millions of $ that interest groups spend on lobby.
One excellent example is Congressman John Murtha.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/20/eveningnews/main4958071.shtml
June 2009 :
U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford sentenced Orange County sheriff chief Michael Carona to 5.5 year prison term and ordered the disgraced lawman to pay a $125,000 fine and serve two years of probation after his release.
CORRUPTION in Santa Ana, rich people, rich area.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/nation/ap/48683617.html
Follow-up:
Here in the US, it should be called “Sie^u Co^.ng Sa?n”…because it’s legal!
We all agree that a bribe is a bribe, but the question remains is whether the result of the bribe is injurious to society. Besides the high price for the equipment, the equipment seems to be working just fine, no defects. What Nexus did to penetrate foreign markets is a price of business. If not them, it could be another foreign company.
To have the FBI checking up on its own people doing business on foreign soil is rather exceptional. Wouldn’t the burden lie in the officials in VN checking up on their own business?
ha, who don’t bribe to do business in Vietnam?
Ha, who don’t bride to do business in Mexico ?
Prosecutors in Mexico say they have put 93 police officers and investigators under house arrest on suspicion of helping a gang of hit men tied to the Gulf drug cartel.
Corruption scandals have long plagued Mexican law enforcement, but the detentions represent 1 of the biggest single roundups of suspect officials in recent years.
http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=10609251&nav=menu605_2
It comes as investigators increasingly report finding what appear to be payroll lists of police officers in the possession of drug traffickers.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office says those detained included police officers and officials from state, federal and local law forces in the central state of Hidalgo. They allegedly protected and cooperated with members of the Zetas gang, which was founded by deserters from an elite army unit.
@ OC Corruption:
Blatant corruption is straight forward. What is difficult is distinguishing corruption that harms others from ones that steer others’ attention to look at your products and services. If the entity committing the bribery is paying extortion to have an opportunity sell their competitive or else superior products and services, it is rather difficult to fault it because it is providing jobs to the country providing the products and services.
USA should continue to crack down on this type of crimes to send a message that we don’t deal with crooks like the Vietnamese Communist who continue to steal, rob, murder, and live everyday in a depraved state of mind. Those peasants had no problems murdering and stealing land that has been in one’s family for hundreds of years. Now their offspring run the country the same way their murdering ancestors did, the crooked and corrupt way. Keep it up Vietnam and you and your people will continue to have the image of a low level peasant that rob and kill for your food.
“The image of low level peasant that rob and kill for your food” ?
It is real, right now ? Vietnamese peasants would kill for food ?
You either have a very fanciful imagination, or very precious information about widespread famine in Vietnam. Please share !
HUNGER in America
Missouri State Republican Rep. Cynthia Davis thinks hunger is a “positive motivator”.
State should stop all programs provide “food for thousands of low-income Missouri children who rely on the school cafeteria for free or reduced-price meals during the regular school year”.
A report by Feeding America found that one in five Missouri children currently lives with hunger.
No more free lunch at schools for children.
@ Bolsa beggar:
That’s one way to balance the budget…hahaha.
I know of this one Viet bloke who was once a mayor back in VN before the country fell. He claims to be patriotic and very religious. It does not matter which religion because it would muddle the story. He was raised a bastard, and his mother worked her ass off to put him through school. While working on her farm, commie aholes decided to steal it and ordered her to leave. She protested and put up a fight, so they broke her back. Since the attack, she could never walk up straight.
The guy knew that education was the only way out of his poor upbringing, so he studied and studied and finally passed the college entrance exam to attend that only elite university back in VN which produced future leaders for the country. Yeah, he graduated and married the local Chinese Viet. Through her Chinese father’s connection and money, he was given a province to manage.
Rather than do the right thing to show how democratic VN leadership was so much different from communist, he too engaged in extortion and was caught. Again, the father in law bailed his ass out of jail.
When VN fell, the Chinese father in law remained in VN because that is where he grew up, and this guy fled with his family. To this day, this guy is very proud of his Viet heritage and his religion. He talks about it everyday.
I am thinking to myself just maybe the guy is the lone sociopath in the Viet population. I was invited to attend one of his college alma mater annual get together, and I can tell you that most of them are like him, latent psychopath waiting for the opportunity to further their personal gain at the expense of others.
In our heart of hearts, can the recent past and present leaders of VN say with a clear conscience that they did the best they could to do what was right for the country and people?
@Proud Viet:
If that’s your definition of sociopath then America is full of Sociopath politicians.
Its rumored that Sarah Palin resigned because she was a ‘sociopath’ (she used her political position for personal gain).
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/03/palin-hockey-arena-scandal/
@ Proud Viet:
Take a long walk on a short bridge with your story, you freak!
GAO : contractors got billions in bonuses from Uncle Sam, regardless of poor performance :
Federal agencies have awarded billions in bonuses to contractors regardless of whether the work was deemed satisfactory, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/05/AR2009070502520.html
That is your money being wasted, folks, here in the good old USA.