Ministry of Public Security proposes to abolish death penalty for embezzlement and bribery

The Ministry of Justice has just announced the appraisal dossier of the draft submission, the draft of the revised Penal Code prepared by the Ministry of Public Security. It is expected that the draft Penal Code (amended) will be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration, comments, and approval according to the shortened procedures at the 10th Session of the 15th National Assembly (October 2025).

According to the content of the draft Law on Amendments, the amendment and supplementation of the 2015 Penal Code aims to specify the provisions on human rights according to the 2013 Constitution. This is to continue to institutionalize the Party's guidelines, policies and strategies on crime prevention in the context of building and perfecting the rule of law state in the new period, making breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation and national digital transformation, international integration, effectively contributing to protecting the regime, protecting human rights...

The Ministry of Public Security believes that the quantitative levels and types of penalties in the frameworks with the highest penalty being the death penalty for some crimes are still relatively broad, leading to difficulties in determining the basis for imposing the death penalty in practice.

According to the current Penal Code, there are 18 crimes with the highest penalty being the death penalty. However, recent practice has shown that some crimes are of a nature and level of danger to society that does not require the death penalty.

At the same time, in practice, the court has not applied the death penalty to these crimes, for example: the crime of "activities aimed at overthrowing the people's government", the crime of "sabotaging the material and technical facilities of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam", the crime of "producing and trading in counterfeit medicines and disease prevention products"... or rarely applied such as: the crime of "embezzlement of property", "accepting bribes"...

Regarding the scope of not applying the death penalty, the Ministry of Public Security's submission clearly stated: cases of people with serious illnesses such as terminal cancer, HIV infection that has progressed to AIDS, opportunistic infections, and poor prognosis are diseases that are like a death sentence but still have to be detained and receive active treatment to await execution, without any regulations on not applying the death penalty or not executing the death sentence for these subjects.

The proposal proposes to abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without parole (still ensuring the isolation of criminals from social life) for five crimes: "activities aimed at overthrowing the people's government"; "sabotaging the material and technical facilities of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam"; "producing and trading in counterfeit medicines and disease prevention products"; "illegally transporting narcotics"; "undermining peace and waging aggressive wars".

In addition, the death penalty is abolished and replaced with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a number of other crimes, including "espionage"; "embezzlement" and "bribery".

In addition, the draft also amends a number of other provisions related to the death penalty. Accordingly, it adds a provision that the court can postpone the execution of the death sentence for 2 years for the convicted person at the time of the death sentence.