Da Nang leaders to be held responsible for land wrongdoings

TUOITRENEWS  

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The Government Inspectorate today publicized the results of an inspection into land use and management in Da Nang city. Based on these findings the Prime Minister has agreed that city leaders must be held responsible for their wrongdoings, which have caused great losses for the State.

>> Da Nang rejects inspectorate’s land conclusion

The Inspectorate will announce the content of the inspection, which was recently conducted on the responsibility of the chairman of the city People’s Committee in land-related wrongdoings that caused a loss of VND3,434 billion (US$160.58 million) from 2003 to 2011.

Da Nang authorities have set up a company to sell State land, while under the Law on Land, land must not be sold, only allocated or leased, the Inspectorate said.

Moreover, the city Land Pricing Council and the local People’s Committee had applied land prices lower than market rates when local authorities allocated land to projects.

Such low prices have enabled the projects’ investors to gain a total profit of over VND2 trillion while causing a great loss to the State budget.

In its conclusion, the Inspectorate said that such wrongdoings contained signs of “intentionally acting against regulations on land and construction investment and of illegally assigning land to gain a huge profit while causing loss to the State.”

The land area A2-A3 in Da Nang, one of the lands included in the inspection of the Inspectorate (Photo: Tuoi Tre) 

The Inspectorate also said that city authorities were wrong in offering a 10 percent land use fee to a number of subjects. 

The city People’s Committee has rejected the Inspectorate’s allegations and provided explanations by way of counter-argument. However, the Inspectorate has rejected the committee’s claims.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has agreed with the investigation’s conclusion and ordered the Ministry of Public Security to investigate a number of wrongdoings.

The PM agreed to the Inspectorate’s proposal that the chairman of the city People’s Committee and his related deputies and other relevant individuals and organizations from the 2003-2011 period must be scrutinized and held responsible for their land-related wrongdoings.

The PM also ordered concerned agencies to recover the lost amount.