By Nadeem ShadA court in Vietnam has jailed 54 people, including several high-ranking officials and a former minister, in one of the country's largest ever bribery and corruption cases.
The defendants were involved in a scheme in which diplomats and businesspeople took money from Vietnamese citizens abroad who wanted to return to the country on repatriation flights during the pandemic, when commercial travel was not available.State-run newspaper VTC reported that 25 state officials were found guilty of taking pay-offs worth a total of $7.4m .
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Kien, who received a life sentence for being the recipient of 253 bribes in an 11 month period worth a total of $1.8m . One mother from Hanoi told AFP news agency that she had to spend $12,000 to get her teenage daughter back into the country from Europe during the pandemic's peak.