Japan told the Vietnamese government Monday it will temporarily
suspend official development assistance due to an alleged bribery case
involving a Japanese-funded Hanoi urban railway project, the Japanese
embassy here said.
The Japanese government notified Hanoi of
the suspension at a bilateral meeting to prevent irregularities, the
embassy said, after six Vietnamese railway officials were detained in
May over a contract awarded to Tokyo-based Japan Transportation
Consultants Inc.
As conditions for resuming ODA, Tokyo
required that Hanoi probe whether there was anything illicit regarding
contracts involving state-owned Vietnam Railways Corp. or JTC, and to
draw up measures to prevent a recurrence, the embassy said.
At the next meeting late this month, the Japanese side will consider
whether to resume ODA after studying the outcome of Vietnam's
investigation and preventive measures, the embassy said.
At
Monday's meeting, Japanese officials notified their Vietnamese
counterparts that Tokyo will suspend loans for the first phase of
building railway line No. 1 of the urban railway project, the embassy
said.
JTC said in April that an independent panel found that
it paid 160 million yen in kickbacks to officials involved in projects
in Vietnam, Indonesia, Uzbekistan between 2009 and 2014. Its payments to
secure an
ODA-funded project order in Vietnam were estimated at 66
million yen.
Vietnamese authorities are investigating the
matter after detaining six railway officials, including Tran Quoc Dong, a
deputy general director of Vietnam Railways.
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