[Vnbiz] Moree EEL: Money smuggler did it to help his poor village in Vietnam

[AD Marshall]

Another recent incident that might be interesting to try fit into the
ethics, economics or law (EEL ;)) thread (under "Intel Vietnam refuses to
pay bribes") -- from
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/money-smuggler-did-it-to-help-his-poor-village-in-vietnam/2007/08/17/1186857771523.html
(See BeLow.)

Which had or should have had primacy for Van Dang Tran -- or other criminal
entrepreneurs likening Robin Hood?  Ethics, economics or law?

Money smuggler did it to help his poor village in Vietnam
Jennifer Cooke, August 18, 2007

A SOVIET-TRAINED Vietnamese former wing commander, who once flew dignitaries
including Alexander Downer, was jailed yesterday for his part in a smuggling
scheme in which more than $93 million was transported out of Australia.

Van Dang Tran, a pilot with Vietnam Airlines until his arrest at Sydney
Airport last year with more than $540,000 in his cabin luggage, was
sentenced to 4½ years' jail over 18 separate undeclared transports of cash
to Vietnam, totalling $6.499 million, between July 2005 and June last year.
Judge Stephen Norrish was satisfied, however, that Tran was "lured for
altruistic reasons" in wanting to borrow $50,000 - about what he earned in
illegal commissions - for a building project in his poor childhood village
outside Hanoi.

The youngest of 11 siblings, Tran, 38, had been put in touch with the
proprietors of the Long Thanh Money Transfer Company in Footscray, Melbourne
which had three subsidiaries including in Cabramatta and Bankstown from
which he collected a total of $6.499 million and took all but the $540,000
found in his luggage to Vietnam.

Electronic and physical surveillance involving the Footscray money-lending
business revealed Vietnam Airlines flight crew members had allegedly moved
large amounts of cash linked to drug deals out of Australia and Tran was
used regularly, the court was told.

Tran refused to provide investigators from an Australian Crime Commission
task force with any names of crew members allegedly involved.

He pleaded guilty to one charge of reckless money laundering of more than $1
million under the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act. The sentence stipulated a
non-parole period of 2½ years.

1st best guess: Each person's economic thinking constantly weighs the
expected risks of any foreseen costs of breaching ethics and/or laws against
the imagined benefits of doing so as each trade-off arises between the two
(cost and benefits foreseen) and sometimes makes rational, righteous Robin
Hoods of the more courageous among us, good or bad, smart or dumb...
successfully unknown or renowned by their failures...

Bonus guess:

   - The ethical and economic responses are first innate autonomic
   reactions to feelings then evolve with experience, with ethics being always
   being more emotionally influenced, from day one, and economic rationales
   usually becoming more rational and less emotionally influenced, from day
   one, too;
   - laws are later born of the ethical and economic positions of a
   nation's most powerful peoples;
   - then all three become interdependent and evolve and devolve in
   response to mass socio-economic responses (including those ethical and
   legal), with the laws always lagging the average socio-economic response,
   legal or rebelliously not.

ADM
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.saigon.com/pipermail/vnbiz/attachments/20070818/63408b86/attachment.html