Rendition Operation in Berlin
A fugitive ex-Communist Party official was kidnapped in Berlin by Vietnamese intelligence agents in July 2017.
Trinh Xuan Thanh was the head of the state-owned oil firm subsidiary Petrovietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation from 2009 until 2013. Petrovietnam is the country’s largest oil and gas firm and its largest overall commercial enterprise. After leaving the company he served as head of the representative office of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the central province of Da Nang. In May 2016 he was elected to serve as the Deputy Chairman of the People’s Committee in Hau Giang Province.
Almost immediately he was spotted driving an expensive Lexus 570 luxury SUV with a blue government license plate, which caused an uproar online. The Party Central Office opened an investigation into him, as party officials were expected not to live ostentatiously. In June he announced he would not seek reelection to the People’s Committee amid the ongoing investigation, just one month after he’d first assumed office.
He was also accused of accumulating losses of $150,000,000 at the oil firm through mismanagement and opaque subcontracts before he left in 2013. A few weeks later, Thanh fled to Germany where he requested political asylum. In September he was expelled from the Communist Party, and a week later an international arrest warrant was issued in his name.
