Four former executives at Vietnamese state shipbuilder Vinashin have been jailed for banking illegal interest payments from OceanBank.
After a three-day trial, a Hanoi court sentenced former chairman Nguyen Ngoc Su to 13 years in prison for "abuse of power or position to appropriate property,", VNExpress International reported.
Ex-general director Truong Van Tuyen, former deputy general director Pham Thanh Son and former chief accountant Tran Duc Chinh received jail terms of seven, six and 17 respectively on the same charges.
The court heard that, between 2010 and June 2014, Vinashin made over 2,300 term deposit contracts worth nearly VND 104 trillion ($4.46bn) and $182m.
It received interest payments of nearly VND 1.1 trillion ($47.2m) and $30,000, the indictment said.
Chinh kept these payments off the books and used them to cover Vinashin's expenses, the hearing was told.
Su admitted to appropriating VND 8bn, Tuyen VND 3.5bn, Son VND 1.2bn and Chinh VND 10bn.
The defendants have returned the money.
But it could not be determined who received the remaining VND 60bn, so the court ruled all four were responsible for returning this as well.
Su expressed regret that he had not considered the issue carefully before issuing the policy for Vinashin to deposit money with OceanBank and asked for leniency.
The four men were handed lighter sentences due to their "good personal backgrounds", many achievements and guilty pleas, the report said.
The trial was part of the second phase of a probe into OceanBank, which paid interest above the ceiling rates regulated by the State Bank of Vietnam to customers, it added.
The bank's former chairman Ha Van Tham was sentenced to life in prison in 2017.
