A court in Bac Ninh province has handed 18 defendants jail terms for giving or taking bribes in a meal supply scam at Samsung Electronics Vietnam (SEV) and Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen (SEVT).
Accordingly, Welstory Vietnam Company Limited and Tristar Catering Company Limited were meal suppliers to SEV and SEVT. Staff from Samsung, the two meal suppliers, and food suppliers are typically in charge of checking food quality.
Between January 2018 and February 2020, staff of SEV, SEVT, and Welstory Vietnam received bribes of about VND8 billion ($340,000) from 28 food suppliers to facilitate or ignore mistakes during the procurement of food.
At the first-instance trial, the court in Bac Ninh, northern Vietnam handed the heaviest punishments of 20 years in jail to Nguyen Van Diep, 30, Samsung staff; and 18 years to Nguyen Thanh Nam, 45, chief chef of Welstory Vietnam.
Other defendants were given sentences between 15 years and suspended sentences of two years.
Samsung is the largest foreign investor in Vietnam. About 60% of the South Korean group's smartphones are made in Vietnam and the group has invested more than $20 billion as of June 2022, about 28 times higher than its initial commitment.
The total net profit earned by the tech giant’s four units in Vietnam - Samsung HCMC CE Complex (SEHC), Samsung Display Vietnam (SDV), Samsung Electronics Vietnam (SEV) and Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen (SEVT) - rose 11.7% year-on-year to $1.43 billion in the first quarter of 2022, according to Samsung’s financial report for the period.