Director accused of defrauding medical gloves of $3.2 million

Portrait of Director of Medical HBC Joint Stock Company Bui Quang Hai, who defrauded the sale of medical gloves, embezzling more than 3.2 million USD, was prosecuted

Bui Quang Hai's actions are stated in the indictment that the Ho Chi Minh City People's Procuracy has just completed and transferred the case file to the court to bring to trial for the crime of Fraudulent appropriation of property, according to Clause 4, Article 174 of the Penal Code, the highest penalty is life imprisonment.

In mid-2020, Covid-19 broke out strongly in the world, many medical items were scarce, especially masks. According to the indictment, on July 24, 2020, Hai represented HBC International Trading Joint Stock Company (HBC Company), signed a contract to sell one million boxes of powder-free medical gloves to PDP Company (headquartered in Hong Kong) worth 6,350 USD.

The partner transferred 30% deposit (more than 1.9 million USD) and 210,000 USD in contract addendum to HBC Company. The two parties later terminated the contract but HBC did not return the money to the partner.

At the end of November 2020, Hai signed a contract to sell 6,400 boxes of medical gloves to a company in Japan. This company paid a part of the contract value of 512,000 USD. Also during this time, Hai signed a contract to sell 6,400 boxes of medical gloves to a company in the US and the partner paid 607,000 USD.

However, after receiving the money, HBC Company did not produce or source goods to deliver as agreed, but instead appropriated a total of more than 3.2 million USD (equivalent to more than 75 billion VND) from the three companies.

During the investigation, Hai stated that although he was the director, Mr. Do Trung Duong was the person behind the company's operations and direction. Through a broker, HBC Company contacted the three companies above to sign a contract to buy and sell medical gloves. After the partner transferred money into the company's account, under Mr. Duong's direction, Hai signed a cash withdrawal paper, authorizing the payment to the treasurer Nguyen Thi Thu Ha to go to the bank to withdraw. Ha then transferred the money to Mr. Duong's account.

Hai claimed that he was the owner of the company account, but Mr. Duong was the one who received the information about the changes. Thinking that Mr. Duong directed the withdrawal to find a source to buy gloves for a partner, Hai signed.

Treasurer Ha stated that the withdrawn money was not given to Hai but was transferred under Duong's direction. She herself did not know about the content of the company's glove purchase contracts with partners, nor did she contact these companies.

Meanwhile, Mr. Duong denied all of Hai and Ha's statements. Mr. Duong said that he was not a shareholder, did not manage or operate HBC Company. He also did not know that Hai represented HBC Company in buying and selling medical gloves to partners, so he did not know that these companies transferred money to HBC.

The money that Ha transferred to his account was Hai's capital contribution to jointly invest in a land project in Vung Tau. In addition, the two sides had a relationship of borrowing money back and forth many times but he could not remember the total amount.

The investigation results determined that Mr. Duong received the money transferred by Ha and that he was involved in receiving the money that Hai appropriated from the victim. However, he is not a shareholder of HBC Company, the investigation period has expired, and the verification has not yet been completed, so there is not enough basis to consider the responsibility of Mr. Duong and related people. The investigation agency continues to consolidate evidence to clarify Mr. Duong's role.

According to VnExpress