On January 11, 2022, the Hanoi People’s Court held a trial for Mai Phan Loi, a
former journalist and founder of a nonprofit organization, over “tax evasion”
charges. The court sentenced the former journalist to a total of 48 months in
jail on the same day. He was also ordered to reimburse the tax evasion money,
state media reported.
According to The 88 Project, Mai Phan
Loi, 50-years-old, is a former editor-in-chief of Phap Luat, a prominent
state-run magazine focused on legal issues. In 2016, he was one of the
representatives of the Vietnamese civil organization allowed to meet
then-President Barack Obama in Hanoi. Loi was officially arrested in July and
consequently charged with “committing tax evasion” under Article 200 of
Vietnam’s Penal Code.
He was also the founder and director of the Center for Media in Educating
Community (MEC), a nonprofit organization that has a communication channel
called GTV, which produces education shows for the public on various
communication skills and techniques.
The indictment claims that Mai Phan Loi “directly ordered his subordinates not
to declare and pay tax” and that he subsequently “benefited from the entire
amount of tax evasion.” State media also quoteed the investigation agency’s
conclusion that Loi and his crime partner, Dang Dinh Bach, had evaded and
benefited in nearly 2 billion dong ($88,000) from financial donations worth more
than 19 billion dong that his organization had received.
Loi and Bach, who received 30 months in jail, are both executive board members
of VNGO-EVFTA Network, a group of seven community service organizations (CSOs)
established last November to satisfy the formation of the Domestic Advisory
Group (DAG), a civil society component of the EU-VN Free Trade Agreement
(EVFTA), the
88 Project reports.
DAGs allow independent observers such as CSOs to monitor the implementation of
the EVFTA, especially in areas such as workers’ rights, land rights, and the
environment, writes the 88 Project. The imprisonment of Mai Phan Loi is widely
seen as an effort by Hanoi to prevent the establishment of this group. In
reality, Vietnam has no independent non-profit organizations (NGOs) while all
organizations operating locally must be associated with the Communist
Party-controlled Fatherland Front.
The Vietnamese authorities often use “tax evasion” charges to stifle critical
and influential voices when they do not have strong evidence to prosecute using
“anti-state” allegations. The case of attorney Le
Quoc Quan in 2013 is an example of this suppression strategy.
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