Nguyen Son Lo

On 4 July 2022, the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA) issued a decision to suspend operations of the Institute of Technology Research and Development SENA in order to proceed with procedures on its dissolution. The reason given was that this Institute violated the regulations of operation registration. Since 2005, SENA has not paid rent to the state and has not made the declaration of the use and management of house and land according to Decision No. 09/2007/TTg of the Prime Minister. In 2007, SENA on their own signed agreements under the form of service contracts with different foreign organizations for renting out a part of their space. This was considered a violation of Article 5.2, Decision No. 09/2007/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister dated January 19, 2007 and Article 6 of Law on Management and Use of State Property No.09/2008/QH12 dated June 12, 2008. 

On July 27, 2022, Lieutenant General To An Xo, the Spokesperson and the Chief of the Ministry of Public Security Secretariat, declared that the Investigation Security Agency of the Ministry of Public Security had issued a decision on filing charges against Nguyen Son Lo. In addition, the Security Investigation Agency also proceeded with searching his residence and workplace and issued a decision on residential confinement and exit restriction. Lo was put under house arrest and under travel restrictions but not detained in a detention center (update: he was later taken into custody in February 2023).

One observation on the potential reason for the charge against Lo is that from 2009 to 2013, Nguyen Son Lo, as the director of SENA, lodged complaints against the decision of Hanoi People’s Committee on reclaiming the headquarters of SENA to expand the headquarters of Ba Dinh district’s Public Security. Those complaints were all rejected, but Lo had continued to follow the case.  The decision on reclaiming the land SENA sits on, which occupies a sought after location, has still not been implemented.