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

[Tran Dinh Hoanh]

Dear brother Andi & CACC,

Interesting story.  But I don't really buy his excuses.  I think he is
lying.

First, transporting 6.5 million dollars and getting only $50K in commission
is absurd.  Criminal activities pay much higher than that.  A 10%
commission, that would be $650K, 3% would be $195K.  $50K is in no way
within the range.  And this is an experienced pilot, he is not so stupid as
to do crimes at peanut price.  He is lying to the authorities and have
hundreds of thousands of dollars still stacked up in Vietnam somewhere.  You
will see he spend that money after he gets out of jail.

Second, he needs money for a community project so he commits crimes?  That
is unreal.  Ethical people commit crime, if they do, only because they are
pressed into it by really pressing need, such as they have to eat to
survive, they need food and medicine for their children, not for something
as vague as "a building for his poor village."  For that kind  project, he
can do it fairly easily by just organizing a volunteer group, motivate
people and raise funds.  I am sure that as a pilot he can easily motivate
the airlines and airlines workers into supporting that project. There is no
need at all for money laundering.

If you visit prison, Andi, most of the hard-core criminals in prison will
tell you that "I didn't do it, they framed me"  or "the stupid police
confused me with someone else" or "I did it but just to help the city get
rid of criminals."  Rarely you will find a criminal that simply says "Mea
Culpa, meaculpa, mea culpa."

I am not being cynical.  I am in the legal work for so long that I just have
to have a very good sense of whether someone is telling the truth or lying.

Have a great day!

Hoanh


On 8/18/07, AD Marshall <admarshall at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [ Vietnam Business Forum ]
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>

-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, Esq., LLB, JD
Washington DC
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