On 30/3, the Police Department for Environmental Crime Prevention (C05), Ministry of Public Security, announced that, in coordination with the Investigative Police Agency of Hanoi City Police, they had initiated legal proceedings against Hoang Van Thuc and 10 others. They are being investigated for crimes including: violation of bidding regulations causing serious consequences, bribery, and receiving bribes.

Environmental Department head Hoang Van Thuc. Photo: Gia Chinh

Initial findings indicate violations in projects to establish an air environmental monitoring network and upgrade environmental monitoring systems. These projects were carried out at the Northern Environmental Monitoring Center, a division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, and other related units across the country. After winning the bid, the companies allegedly paid 35 billion VND to Thuc. To generate funds for these illicit payments to the project owner, the contractors inflated the prices of imported equipment.

The projects involved one of 18 automatic air quality monitoring stations nationwide, which the Environmental Department invested in and has managed since 2020. These stations are strategically located in public areas to monitor air quality and provide pollution warnings to local communities.

Seiky Group Joint Stock Company and Global Technical Joint Stock Company, operating as a joint venture, supplied the monitoring system.

Previously, C05 announced it had coordinated the prosecution of 74 defendants across 10 different cases. These individuals included officials and leaders from state environmental management agencies, as well as representatives from 59 businesses involved in discharging waste and installing monitoring equipment nationwide.

Searches of more than 300 environmental monitoring stations at various emission sources revealed that nearly 160 stations had been tampered with and their data manipulated. Factories faced production shutdowns if pollution indices exceeded thresholds and triggered red alerts. To avoid these shutdowns, businesses employed various methods to keep reported data within acceptable limits.