Maintaining integrity of people’s public security force

Among those who were arrested in relation to the case, there were former Director General of the Police General Department - former Lieutenant General Phan Van Vinh; and former Director of the MoPS’s Police Department for Hi-tech Crime Prevention - former Major General Nguyen Thanh Hoa.

Those officers should have carried out their tasks and responsibility as assigned by the Party, the State and the people, which are to fight crimes and law violations. Instead, they used their power and position to cover up for criminals and gain profits from illegal act of using the internet for gambling organisation and money laundering.

There may be various causes for the degradation and corruption of a person or a member of the people’s public security force. But after all, the major cause is the negligence of self-discipline and self-training, resulting in faded revolutionary ideal and disregard for law. 

The line between light and darkness, between good and evil, and between a representative of justice and a criminal is very slim. In an environment full of temptations, if one relaxes self-discipline and fails to maintain integrity, it is very easy to fall to temptation, thus covering up for, and more seriously, lending a hand to illegal acts. The more important position such persons are in, the more serious consequences that their degradation causes to society. 

The revelation of the gambling case serves as a sad and costly lesson for the people’s public security force. When investigating the case, the force demonstrates a resolve to clean up its apparatus and remove those who no longer deserve to be members of the revolutionary public security force. 

The crackdown on the case also shows the determination of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the State in preventing and fighting all manifestations of degradation of political ideology, morality and lifestyle, as well as of “self evolution” and “self transformation” within the Party, towards strengthening discipline and law. 

According to the Ministry of Public Security, the online gambling ring, which used the websites rikvip.com and rikvip.vn, had attracted nearly 43 million accounts. It was considered to be a disguised gambling system with the largest scale and revenue in Vietnam. Total money paid via legal and illegal payment gateways since 2015 was estimated to exceed VND9.58 trillion (around US$422 million). 

So far nearly 90 persons have been prosecuted and arrested for their involvement in the case.