Kidney trading gang jailed for 5 to 6 years | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Kidney trading gang jailed for 5 to 6 years

November 24, 2011 about Uncategorized

LookAtVietnam - The People’s Court in Can Tho City on Tuesday sentenced four members of a kidney-trading ring to prison for five to six years each on charges of “organising people to flee the country”.

The four kidney sale brokers in court. (Photo: Tuoi Tre)

Organ trading is a crime in Viet Nam, but in this case, the criminal activity took place across the border in China. Thus, the court tried the case on a different charge.

The court handed down a six-year prison sentence each to Vo Dinh Van, a 25-year-old resident of HCM City’s Go Vap District and La Thi Thinh, 40, a resident of Bac Giang Province’s Son Dong District.

Le Son Truyen, 27, from southwestern Tay Ninh Province’s Duong Minh Chau District, and Quang Dai Vang, 24, from central Ninh Thuan Province’s Ninh Phuoc District were sentenced to five years each on the same charge.

The court also demanded the confiscation of illegal profits of VND98 million from Van, VND30 million from Truyen, VND21 million from Vang, and VND5.7 million from Thinh.

According to the court’s verdict, in early 2008, Van and Truyen were taken to China to sell their kidneys.

Van and Truyen became the first members of the ring to sell their kidneys to two Chinese traders whose details have not been released.

Van and Truyen were introduced to Thinh, who took people willing to sell their kidneys to Guangzhou Province in China.

For each person taken to the Chinese province, Thinh received 100 yuan (VND300,000 or US$15) from Van and Truyen.

Vang became a member of the ring after selling his kidney in China in 2009. Vang received VND3 million ($150) for each person he successfully took to China.

In February this year, Vang was arrested in Can Tho when he was on his way to take a Can Tho resident to China to sell his kidney.

The other members of the ring were discovered after Vang’s arrest.

According to the court’s verdict, from 2008 to February this year, the four members of the ring who have been sentenced to prison took 19 poor Vietnamese nationals from HCM City and southern provinces to China to sell their kidneys.

They earned profits of over VND150 million ($US7,300). Each kidney was sold for VND40 million to VND50 million ($2,410) with all travel and accommodation expenses paid by Chinese traders.

For each person taken to China, the brokers got VND10 million ($483).

According to medical exams conducted on three victims of the ring, the organ sale had damaged 41 per cent of their health, according to police’s investigation.

In 2008, a 22-year-old Vietnamese student died at his home in Ninh Thuan Province after selling his kidneys in China several months earlier.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News



Kidney trading gang jailed for 5 to 6 years | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Tougher rule for black greenback market

The government has taken a tough stance on dollar speculation and illegal trading to cool the escalating unofficial exchange rate on the black market.
Under a government directive late last week, the central bank ordered all authorised foreign currency trading agents to sell the whole amounts of greenbacks they have bought from the public to commercial banks.The new move is part of the central bank’s efforts to prevent illegal dollar transactions through trading agents’ prohibited reselling of purchased greenbacks. The transactions are a major reason behind the record high unofficial dong-to-dollar exchange rate of 18,200 on June 4 as people rushed to the black market for hoarding purposes. In the previous week, the unofficial exchange rate was pushed up to VND17,700 per dollar, caused by people’s dong depreciation fears.“The sky-high rate was caused purely by public speculation with agents creating ‘illegal’ liquidity to the black market,” said Hoang Dinh Thang, the State Bank’s chief inspector. The escalating unofficial exchange rate has prompted the central bank to broadcast an alert to the public about black market speculation, possibly fuelled by several financial institutions.Thang said the black market dollar fever would calm once the unofficial exchange rate was curbed.

After the central bank move, the black market’s exchange rate quickly fell to VND16,200-16,400 per dollar.

Thang said the State Bank’s Inspection Department would this week investigate foreign currency trading agents’ activities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. “We will also supervise agents’ daily trading activities to ensure all foreign currencies bought [by these agents] from the public are sold to commercial banks at the end of the day,” he added. Under the Foreign Exchange Management Ordinance, agents are only authorised to buy foreign currencies from the public and resell them to commercial banks. Reselling to other buyers is prohibited. Commercial banks are now only permitted to trade dollars 1 per cent either side of the State Bank’s daily official exchange rate. On June 6, the rate was set at VND16,124 per dollar on a continuous upward trend.
However, a Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) source said foreign banks’ greenback demand was considerable with some even accepting a higher rate to buy dollars from domestic commercial banks.
On June 3, 2008, some foreign bank branches offered a rate at VND17,700 per dollar to buy from local banks via the interbank market. Despite the dollar fever which has prompted a tightened control, a central bank source said the black market size was too small to affect the banking system. The source also said that Vietnam’s foreign currency reserves had not been affected despite the widening trade deficit which hit $14.4 billion over the first five months of 2008, almost equal to the level for the whole of 2007.