Nguyen Bac Son, who led the Ministry of Information and Communications between 2011 and 2016, has been sentenced to life in prison for accepting a US$3 million bribe in connection with MobiFone's murky TV firm acquisition deal.

Many individuals and organisations have called on the Hanoi court to reduce the sentence for the former chairman of the private pay-TV firm Audio Visual Global (AVG), Pham Nhat Vu at the on-going trial of the company's acquisition project.

Former Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Bac Son said on December 20 that he had met with his family to discuss how to return the US$3 million that he had received as bribes from then-AVG chairman Pham Nhat Vu.

Law enforcement agencies have so far collected a whopping VND8.845 trillion (US$382 million) to recover losses from a murky share acquisition between State-run MobiFone Telecommunications Corporation and a private pay TV provider.

The Supreme People’s Procuracy on October 19 notified the prosecution of two former ministers of information and communications (MIC) – Nguyen Bac Son and Truong Minh Tuan, along with 12 other defendants.

The Investigative Police Agency announced today on its website that it issued a decision a day earlier filing charges against and detaining Pham Nhat Vu, former chairman of private pay-TV firm AVG, for allegedly giving bribes.