The World Bank Wednesday welcomed the Vietnamese governments actions to tackle a major embezzlement scandal but said the investigation into the misuse of foreign aid should continue, reports the World Bank press review.
Transport Minister Dao Dinh Binh resigned and his deputy was arrested Tuesday in a scam in which millions of dollars including foreign money intended for infrastructure projects were looted in the ministrys Project Management Unit (PMU) 18.
The World Bank over the past six years disbursed around 80 million US dollar (496 mio. DKR) to PMU 18 for about 1.000 different projects, Country Director Klaus Rohland said. But it was still unclear how much of the theft involved foreign funds and how much involved local money.
– This is something that we all expect the investigation to identify, Rohland said, adding that a Bank supervisory team had already started work on the matter. The donor community would remain very vigilant in weeks to come.
– Should the investigation or our own supervision identify any misuse of our funds, we would then cancel this portion of the credit, Rohland said, adding the Bank would also ask for a refund.
International donors have pledged 3,7 billion dollar in development aid to Vietnam for 2006. The communist government has toughened its stance toward corruption, recently arresting scores of people including senior officials in key industries such as oil and gas, telecommunications, transport and trade.
In a front-page article Wednesday in the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper, columnist Thanh Thao said the public was outraged at how officials have misused government money. “It turns out that people have been paying taxes to feed a gang of inhumane cadres who not only stole from huge foreign loans, but used the stolen money for extravagance”, he wrote.
Vietnam News Brief Service writes that Rohland stressed that this is a chance for the government of Vietnam to show its absolute determination to seriously address the wrongdoing in the hope of boosting the trust from international donors as well as calming peoples anger.
Last month, the World Bank, Vietnams second largest Official Development Aid (ODA) lender, decided to send a working team of investigators from Washington to check the World Banks loan utility, supervise and inspect all World Bank-funded projects with 800 subcontracts carried out by PMU 18 and propose measures, Rohland noted.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
