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HANOI : A Vietnamese court Friday postponed until next week the verdicts for nine people at the core of a gambling and corruption scandal involving state funds, foreign aid and illegal football betting.
The scandal around missing funds from a transport ministry unit rocked the government last year, triggering the resignation of the transport minister and sparking an official anti-corruption drive.
The Hanoi people's court Friday unexpectedly adjourned until Tuesday the hearing, from which foreign media were barred, having earlier indicated the trial would last three days and sentences would be handed down on Friday.
"Some new and complicated problems have just arisen," said judge Ngo Thi Yen, according to a court official. "Therefore, we have decided to delay the announcement of the verdict until Tuesday morning."
State prosecutors have demanded a jail sentence of up to 25 years for the man at the centre of the case, Bui Tien Dung, the former head of a transport ministry road-building agency called Project Management Unit (PMU) 18.
Also in the dock were bureaucrats, former police officers and businessmen accused of gambling embezzled funds and kickbacks on international football matches or of failed attempts to bribe officials to cover up the crimes.
Dung and others allegedly pilfered millions of dollars from PMU 18 -- which administers state funds and foreign loans to build highways, bridges and other infrastructure -- to fund luxury homes, cars and betting on European football.
The ongoing trial has dealt only with charges of gambling, which is considered a "social evil" and illegal in Vietnam, and the attempts to bribe officials -- not the embezzlement itself, which police are still investigating.
PMU 18 chief Dung allegedly placed nearly 760,000 dollars in football bets with property trader Nguyen Van Hong and a former traffic cop, Bui Quang Hung, alleged middlemen in one of Vietnam's illegal but popular gambling rings.
Dung told the court he had already gambled away the family savings due to his "unhappy marital life" and "to kill time," according to state media.
After his January 2006 arrest, Dung allegedly paid around 73,000 dollars to middlemen who were meant to use the money to bribe police and senior officials in a bid to protect him from punishment, prosecutors say.
However, Dung on Friday maintained he was innocent of bribery charges.
Defence lawyers argued there was insufficient evidence of bribery since prosecutors could not name any officials who had received cash, according to online news site VNExpress.
"This is the first case I have encountered where the alleged bribe-givers did not discuss how to deliver the bribes, and where there were no bribe recipients," Dung's lawyer Ngo Ngoc Thuy was quoted as saying.
The PMU 18 scandal broke in late 2005, amid unusually aggressive reporting by Vietnam's state-controlled press and ahead of a five-yearly congress of the ruling Communist Party in April last year.
Transport minister Dao Dinh Binh resigned over the scandal and his deputy, Nguyen Viet Tien, was arrested and remains in custody.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who was chosen for the job at the congress, has vowed to crack down on corruption, which is considered endemic in Vietnam and has sparked anger among both the public and foreign donor countries.
Donors who have in the past channelled funds into the PMU 18 construction unit included Japan, the European Union, Australia and the World Bank.
The World Bank, the Washington-based international development agency, has said an internal inquiry had found "no evidence supporting allegations of fraud and corruption against PMU 18 officials" in bank-funded projects.
- AFP /ls
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