In May, the Court of First Instance in the southern province of Dong Nai sentenced 46-year-old Nguyen Lam Thai to a 26-year jail term after convicting him of fraud and tax evasion. Thai and 35 others of the 46 convicted of various related crimes at the trial have since lodged appeals, court officials said.

Thai has pleaded innocent to the fraud charge and has asked for lighter sentencing on the tax evasion count.

Thai was arrested in June 2005 and charged with faking quotations, invoices and other documents to prove that his corporate group, C.I.P, had the capacity to supply some VND31 billion (US$1.9 million) worth of equipment to many provincial post offices.

In fact, the company did not have the financial wherewithal to buy and sell said equipment and instead bought cheaper products and faked quality and origin documents before selling the goods to post offices for a total profit of some VND24 billion ($1.5 million)

The company also acquired blank value-added tax invoices and used them to claim that the firm had already paid some VND3.2 billion ($200,000) worth of taxes on the goods.

Twenty seven state officials, who worked at the 12 post offices involved in the case, were convicted at the first trial for dereliction of duty in letting the faked invoices fly.

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