Province chairman arrested for allowing illegal sand mining

The chairman of An Giang Province has been arrested for a major sand-mining scandal that occurred on his watch and faces the charge of "abuse of power in performance of official duties."

Nguyen Thanh Binh, the chairman of the An Giang People's Committee in Vietnam, has been arrested on charges of abusing his authority in connection with illegal sand mining activities. The arrest follows allegations that Binh granted a license to Trung Hau 68 JSC for the unauthorized extraction of sand in My Hiep and Binh Phuoc Xuan communes in Cho Moi District. The company was initially licensed to mine 1.5 million cubic meters of sand for the construction of four sections of the North-South Expressway. However, authorities claim that the company exploited over 4.7 million cubic meters of sand, valued at VND253 billion on the market, exceeding the permitted capacity.

Binh's arrest is part of a broader investigation into corruption and bribery related to illegal sand mining. Tran Anh Thu, deputy chairman of the province, has already been arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe of VND1.2 billion ($50,000) to allow Trung Hau 68 JSC to exceed its licensed sand mining capacity. Nguyen Viet Tri, director of the province Department of Natural Resources and Environment, is also implicated in the bribery scheme.

According to law enforcement authorities, Binh and his accomplices established intermediary companies to sell the illegally mined sand, using false invoices to conceal the transactions. The ill-gotten gains were allegedly shared with several officials involved in the scheme. The investigation encompasses seven other dismissed officials from the Department of Natural Resources and Environment and the province's Monitoring Center, who face charges of abusing their power for personal gain in connection with the sand mining case. The case underscores the ongoing challenges posed by corruption and illegal resource extraction in various parts of the world.