Defandant Lê Thanh Thản at the court in 2023. Photo courtery of Hà Nội Police

HÀ NỘI — Lê Thanh Thản, chairman of Mường Thanh Group and CEO of Bemes Company continues to face prosecution on charges of defrauding customers in a case that has dragged on for six years, and which the court had previously returned for further investigation.

The Hà Nội People's Procuracy has just issued an indictment prosecuting Thản, 75, for the crime of "Deceiving customers" as stipulated in Article 198, Clause 2, Point d, of the Penal Code.

Previously, in August 2023, the case was brought to trial by the Hà Nội People's Court with a total of 488 victims. The court then decided to return the case file for further investigation.

In this new indictment, the Hà Nội People's Procuracy has identified the number of victims as 504, an increase of 16 compared to the previous trial.

Along with Thản, five other defendants are also being prosecuted in this case, including Đỗ Văn Hưng, Nguyễn Duy Uyển and Bùi Văn Bằng, former chairmen of Kiến Hưng Ward’s People’s Committee of former Hà Đông District, and Nguyễn Văn Năm, former construction chief inspector of former Hà Đông District, for crime of “Irresponsibility leading to serious consequences”.

According to the indictment, the Kiến Hưng residential CT6 project only received approval for its detailed 1/500 scale construction plan from the People's Committee of former Hà Tây Province (now the People's Committee of Hà Nội) under Decision 1610/QD-UBND dated June 13, 2008.

However, Thản then directed to carry out the project contruction, which seriously violated the aforementioned planning regulations.

Specifically, from March 2011, the accused Thản falsely advertised the legal status of the project, claiming that “the project had been approved, apartment and building designs complied with construction regulations, and the apartment sale price included the value of land-use rights”, in order to gain customers’ trust and persuade them to purchase apartments in the project, which in fact seriously violated the approved planning.

By November 2012, the construction works were completed and began handing over apartments to households for occupation from January 2013.

Thản arbitrarily changed land-use purposes and carried out construction in serious violation of the planning approved by competent authorities.

In particular, for the high-rise blocks, the accused increased the construction area, raised the building height, altered functional uses, added more apartments, and built an additional CT6C block that was not included in the approved planning while for the low-rise housing, he increased the area of land permitted for construction and the number of low-rise units, violating road red-line boundaries.

Investigation results determined that the accused sold 504 apartments to 504 customers who were not recognised by the State as having land-use rights, ownership of housing and other assets attached to land, thereby illegally earning more than VNĐ496 billion (US$20.7 million).

This amount was identified as the damage suffered by the 504 customers.

In addition, the Procuracy assessed that Bemes Company, operated by Thản, chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director responsible for investment and construction of the Kiến Hưng project, committed numerous serious violations of the law in construction activities, including in design, construction, supervision and acceptance.

The violations resulted in the illegal construction of apartments within the project that were ineligible for the issuance of land use rights and home ownership certificates, and did not meet the legal conditions for housing transactions.

Although these violations persisted over a prolonged period, officials of the Kiến Hưng Ward People’s Committee—namely Hưng, Uyển, and Bằng—as well as construction inspection officials Năm and Vương Đăng Quân, failed to carry out inspections or detect the violations in order to prevent and address the unlawful acts at the construction project in accordance with the law.

As a consequence, particularly serious damage was caused to 504 customers who purchased 504 apartments.

In connection with the case, Mai Quang Bài, a former official of the former Hà Đông District Construction Inspection, passed away in 2024.

Therefore, the investigating authority issued a decision to suspend the investigation with respect to Bài. VNS