Police in Vietnam have arrested former environment deputy minister Nguyen Linh Ngoc and four other former senior officials of the ministry’s mining department for allegedly violating mining regulations, reported Reuters.
Ngoc, who was the deputy minister of Natural Resources and Environment in 2010-2018, was accused of “deliberate violations of state economic management regulations, causing serious consequences,” the police-run Ministry of Public Security said in a statement.
The news agency said that the arrests followed a wider investigation into rare earth company Thai Duong Group, which operates a mine in the northern Vietnamese province of Yen Bai. Last year, the company’s chairman and several senior officials were arrested for allegedly forging value-added tax receipts in rare earths trading.
The Ministry of Public Security said it was carrying out further investigations to retrieve state assets that had been lost.
Source: Reuters