Vietnam starts high-profile trial over oil firm losses
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The most serious offences is potentially carrying the death penalty.
The defendants included the communist state’s first politburo member to face trial in decades and a businessman who Germany says was kidnapped by Vietnamese agents from a Berlin park.
The trial is part of a widespread crackdown on fraud and mismanagement in the energy and banking sectors that intensified after the security establishment gained greater influence in the ruling party last year.
The PetroVietnam trial in Hanoi was taking place simultaneously with a separate trial in the commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City, where a fraud case involving Vietnam’s Construction Bank was being heard. ■