Ex-chief of loss-making Vietnamese firm suddenly disappears; likely abroad   File photo of Vu Dinh Duy when he was PVTex CEO. Tuoi Tre The former general director of a Vietnamese company responsible for a US$325 million yarn mill that failed to turn a profit appears to have disappeared, prompting suspicions he has fled the country to avoid allegations of misdoings. Vu Dinh Duy served as the general director of PVTex, the operator of the Dinh Vu yarn making plant in the northern city of Hai Phong, between 2009 and 2014. Duy, 41, currently sits on the board of members of state-run Vinachem, the country’s chemical giant under the management of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, but has been absent from work since late October. On Wednesday, Vinachem notified the trade ministry that Duy had taken sick leave and may have traveled overseas for treatment. A Vinachem representative reasserted the claims to Tuoi Tre, reiterating that Duy’s absence is entirely the result of illness. However, the trade ministry never approved Duy’s leave request. “The Ministry of Industry and Trade has ordered that Vinachem summon Duy to work,” Tran Huu Linh, head of the secretariat of the ministry, told Tuoi Tre. Vinachem has also been asked to review Duy’s legal compliance upon his appearance, Linh added. Inside the PVTex plant Awful leadership The $325 million Dinh Vu plant (PVTex) in Hai Phong City has been forced to temporarily close three times since beginning operations in May 2014. The plant, developed by state-run oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, was in its second temporary shutdown of the year when Tuoi Tre visited it in October 2015. PetroVietnam holds a 75 percent stake in the costly plant, which was built as a mechanism to decrease the reliance of Vietnam’s textile sector on imported raw materials. PVTex aimed to meet 40 percent of the domestic demand for fiber and 12 percent of the domestic demand for yarn, according to PetroVietnam, but the grossly inaccurate feasibility report and uncompetitive production costs ruined all expectations for the oil and gas behemoth. By the end of 2014, PVTex had incurred VND1.08 trillion ($48.21 million) in losses. Deficits increased to VND1.73 trillion ($77.23 million) by March 31, 2015 when the plant had only managed to sell 23,000 out of the 32,000 metric tons of yarn it had produced. The entrance to PVTex Following poor 2009-2014 leadership that put the plant on verge of bankruptcy, Vu Dinh Duy was demoted to deputy general director, and later transferred to the Hai Phong Department of Industry and Trade, where he was appointed deputy director. Duy was later appointed deputy head of the agency in charge of industrial and environmental safety under the Ministry of Industry and Trade by then-minister Vu Huy Hoang. After spending a short time at the agency, the 41-year-old was again transferred to Vinachem. Former trade minister Hoang, who ended his term in April this year, has himself been dismissed from a Party post for multiple wrongful promotions involving his own son and the now internationally wanted Trinh Xuan Thanh.  Duy is now being considered as one of Hoang’s wrongful promotions. The absence of Duy is being closely watched in Vietnam for the similarities it holds to Thanh’s case, where the former senior official asked to travel overseas for health treatment before disappearing, leading to his international manhunt. TUOI TRE NEWS