Ten Vietnamese transport officials affirmed they were not associated with the bribery scandal of the Japan Transportation Consultants, Inc. (JTC) and did not lend a helping hand to the company’s corrupt behaviour.

Nguyen Van Huyen, head of the Transport Ministry’s inspection agency, revealed the information on April 2 after his agency had received all the accounts from the 10 officials.

Ten officials, including former Transport Minister Le Manh Hung and General Director of the Vietnam Road Administration Nguyen Duc Thang, were required to write accounts verifying whether or not they were involved in JTC’s bribery allegations.

JTC was said to offer JPY80 million in corrupt financial incentives to several Vietnamese transport officials to win a bidding package for the Hanoi urban railway route No1 project (Line 1).

Vietnam and Japan are scheduled to jointly hold a meeting in Hanoi on April 3 to look into the case and discuss ways of preventing similar corrupt behaviour for transport projects using ODA capital in the future.

Earlier Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Ngoc Dong visited Japan from March 25-28 to work with relevant Japanese agencies, hoping to get a list of Vietnamese officials involved in the case.

However, the delegation could not clarify the allegations as the scandal was transferred to Japanese judicial agencies for investigation.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), that oversees Japanese ODA-funded projects in Vietnam, have yet to get further information pending investigation.