[PEN-L:28232] Vietnam ousts top communist party cadres

["Ulhas Joglekar" <joglekarulhas@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Times of India

TUESDAY, JULY 16, 2002

Vietnam ousts top communist party cadres

AFP

HANOI: Vietnam's communist party chiefs said Monday they had expelled two
members from its Central Committee for their role in a gangster scandal that
has rocked the regime to its core, state media reported.

Tran Mai Hanh, director general of the official Voice of Vietnam radio, and
deputy police minister Bui Quoc Huy have been ousted from the 150-strong
powerful policy-making body, state television said.

"Tran Mai Hanh has been purged for publishing articles advocating the early
release of
(gangster) Nam Cam," it said, quoting a resolution from the end of the
central committee meeting which began on July 4.

"Bui Quoc Huy has been demoted from lieutenant general to major general and
expelled from the Party Central Committee because, as director of police in
Ho Chi Minh City, he allowed
the Nam Cam gang to operate unhindered for a long time."

The decision to expel the two senior party members came eleven days after
the Central Committee convened to discuss leadership changes ahead of the
opening session of the newly-elected National Assembly on July 19.

Mafia boss Nam Cam, who amassed a fortune from his underworld activities in
Ho Chi Minh City, was first arrested in May 1995 in the southern commercial
capital and sent to a re-education camp.

However he was released after two and a half years of his three year
sentence before being re-arrested in December last year on murder, drug
trafficking, prostitution and extortion charges.

Subsequently, more than 80 officials have been arrested for their links with
the 55-year-old kingpin, while the country's plethora of normally staid
state-run newspapers have reported on the sweeping investigation into the
corruption scandal with uncharacteristically frank and in-depth articles.

The articles have focused on officials and police accused of protecting the
gangster and those who helped secure his release.

Observers have said such reports could not have appeared without tacit
approval from party factions jostling for power ahead of the secretive
Central Committee meeting.

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