The Blazing Furnace Roars Into 2024
The energy sector's turn
Happy New Year! Hello to all new readers, and welcome to the latest edition of the Vietnam Weekly, written by reporter Mike Tatarski. I planned to take this week off from the newsletter, but a lot happened over the holidays and I’m back in Ho Chi Minh City anyway - time to get going.
Today’s post is exclusively for paying subscribers - a reminder that I’m increasing the subscription rate to US$8/month or US$90/year starting next week. You can still lock in the current rate of US$5/month or US$50/year until then.
On to the news.
Anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors certainly didn’t take any time off for Christmas, with several major arrests occurring since mid-December. Two separate new investigations in the energy sector have also emerged, one of which could potentially damage Vietnam’s reputation as a renewable energy champion.
This will likely be a busy month of corruption news ahead of the Tết holiday in early February.
After I wrote that sentence and scheduled this for publication, police announced the arrest of Trần Văn Hiệp, chairman of Lâm Đồng Province, on allegations of accepting bribes related to the Dai Ninh ecological resort and commercial urban area 45 kilometers south of Đà Lạt.
We’ll get into all of that below, but first a few updates on cases previously covered here: