HANOI:
A court in Vietnam sentenced former health minister Nguyen Thanh Long to 18 years in prison on Friday after finding him guilty of taking bribes in a coronavirus testing kit scandal, state media reported.
Nguyen Thanh Long was accused of taking bribes worth $2.25 million in the scandal, in which a local company was accused of conspiring with officials to order a state-funded research unit to fix coronavirus prices test kits and overstated them, according to the Phap Luat Online newspaper. .
Reuters could not immediately reach lawyers for Nguyen Thanh Long for comment.
“I was wrong, I'm sorry,” Nguyen Thanh Long said during the trial.
The verdict comes as Vietnam intensifies its years-long anti-graft campaign, which has seen hundreds of senior officials investigated for corruption, forcing many to quit, including former president and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and two deputy prime ministers.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)