Hoang Ngoc Sau, chairman of the management board of PetroVietnam Power Land JSC (PVL), has beed prosecuted and temporarily arrested by the Security Investigation Agency under the Ministry of Public Security. Photo songmoi.vn

Sau, born in 1966 in the central province of Thanh Hoa, was arrested for violating government regulations on economic management leading to serious consequences pursuant to Article 165 of the Criminal Law.

Sau is the equity representative of the Drilling Mud Corporation (PVC) at PVL. PVC has an equity stake in PVL. In other words, Sau represents PVC's stake in PVL.

Sau is alleged to have been involved in two cases that led to losses of billions of VND for PVL. The first case involves PVL's investment in a project to construct the Linh Tay tenement houses in HCM City's Thu Duc district. The approval had been granted for building an 18-storey building only. However, Sau asked the management board to increase the number of floors to 22. The board agreed and prepared a document to submit to the city's People's Committee and other governmental agencies.

However, without receiving any approval from the municipal People's Committee, Sau signed a contract hiring VNL and Design JSC to develop construction blueprints for 22 floors at a fee of VND9 billion (nearly US$428,580). He also paid them more than VND8 billion ($380,950) as part of the fee.

In October 2012, the committee issued Document No 7938, which stated that it did not approve the increase in the number of floors to the building plan. That meant Sau had caused a loss of more than VND8 billion to PVL.

The second case revolves around Sau causing losses of more than VND11.2 billion ($533,300) to PVL. In this case, PetroVietnam Construction Land Corporation (PVC Land) invested in the An Phu Complex project, which includes a commercial centre, offices and tenement houses. On April 25, 2012, PVC Land hired Vietnam Real Estate JSC to operate a commercial centre, but did not sell any land or permit the company to lease any land under the project.

However, Sau signed a contract to lease more than 1,000 square meters of land at a price of $8,720 per month for five years from the Vietnam Real Estate JSC with the intention of engaging in property trading. PVL paid VND11.2 billion to the Vietnam Real Estate JSC for this contract.

On May 15, 2012, Vietnam Real Estate JSC handed over the leased land to PVL. However, under the terms of its contract with PVC Land, it was not allowed to enter into any lease agreements. Here, Sau caused losses to PVL because of his unauthorized lease agreement.

On November 6, 2013, the management board of PVC announced that Sau resigned from his position at PVL.

After that decision, between November 6 and December 5, Sau registered to buy five million shares of PVL. However, On December 7, 2013, the Hanoi Stock Exchange publicly released Sau's trading information, which showed that he only bought 21,500 shares of PVL, out of the total five million shares permitted to be registered and purchased. — VNS