Quoc Cuong Gia Lai's main business areas are real estate, rubber, hydropower, wood and construction, but the reputation of CEO Nguyen Thi Nhu Loan is associated with cheap public land transfer projects, and recently, with Ms. Truong My Lan in the Van Thinh Phat scandal.

Scandalous project of Quoc Cuong Gia Lai

Ms. Nguyen Thi Nhu Loan, General Director of Quoc Cuong Gia Lai Joint Stock Company, was prosecuted and temporarily detained in a case that occurred at the Vietnam Rubber Industry Group. In this case, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai purchased 100% of the capital contribution of the investor of the project 39-39B Ben Van Don (District 4, Ho Chi Minh City) for more than 464 billion VND (area 6,202m²) in 2014.

The land is originally state-owned and managed by Dong Nai Rubber Corporation and Ba Ria Rubber Company under Vietnam Rubber Industry Group, and these two enterprises contributed capital to establish Phu Viet Tin Company for business.

With this deal, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai of Ms. Nguyen Thi Nhu Loan bought this land from the investor, Phu Viet Tin Company, even though this is public land and the transferring enterprise is 100% state-owned, meaning that the public land has been transferred to private hands without auction.

In 2017, Phu Viet Tin merged with Phuc Nguyen Real Estate Investment and Development Company Limited to form Nova Phuc Nguyen Real Estate Investment and Development Company Limited.

On this land, two apartment towers, 17 and 33 stories high, with nearly 500 apartments, have been built, and residents have lived there, but due to an investigation into the origin of the land, residents are still without their pink books.

With this project, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai has become a "link" in the process of public land being transferred to private land. However, before being prosecuted, Ms. Nguyen Thi Nhu Loan herself also spoke up to affirm that the project was legally sufficient so she bought it back, and whether or not to auction it was up to the government and the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City to decide.

Unsuccessful land purchase deal leaves many people in legal trouble

During the trial of the major case at Van Thinh Phat Group of Ms. Truong My Lan, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai was also mentioned when the trial panel determined that Ms. Truong My Lan used Sunny Island Investment Joint Stock Company to sign a contract promising to buy and sell the Bac Phuoc Kien residential area project with Quoc Cuong Gia Lai, the price was 14,800 billion VND.

Ms. Lan paid Quoc Cuong Gia Lai 2,882.8 billion VND, but because Sunny Island violated its payment obligation, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai only agreed to pay Sunny Island 1,444.1 billion VND.

Quoc Cuong Gia Lai also said that it was the "honest" party when it did not know that the payment was from Ms. Truong My Lan and appealed, saying that it only paid 1,441.4 billion VND to the defendant Truong My Lan.

At the same time, 475 real estates related to Quoc Cuong Gia Lai were seized in the Van Thinh Phat case.

Another incident related to public land was the sale of 32 hectares of public land to Quoc Cuong Gia Lai in 2017, which caused many leaders of Tan Thuan Company to be involved in legal trouble. With this project, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai also targeted the public land to propose a project investment cooperation plan with a ratio of 75:25, or to buy back 100% of the Phuoc Kien project.

At that time, the land price was only over 1 million VND/m², the transfer price was over 1.2 million VND/m², then the price was asked to be renegotiated but it was only raised to nearly 1.8 million VND/m².

However, the deal failed, the transfer contract was canceled, and those involved in the transfer process went to jail.