Vietnam detains local man for engagement in int'l gambling ring

Vietnamese police have detained a 41- year-old man for his involvement in an international soccer betting ring run by an overseas Vietnamese, local media reported Monday.

The man from northern Thai Binh province, Ta Quang Lich, has made bets totaling 200 million Vietnamese dong (VND) (nearly 12, 600 U.S. dollars) via the ring run by the overseas Vietnamese man named Ngo Tien Dung, who is allegedly one of leaders of a crime gang named Long Haul engaging in trafficking drugs and laundering money in Europe and Asia, Pioneer newspaper said.

Lich is suspected to act as the ring's intermediary between local bookmakers and bettors after making bets via the ring for some time. Before Lich's arrest, local police detained Dung, who was doing business in different fields in Hanoi capital, and two of his Vietnamese underlings.

While serving an imprisonment sentence for the charge of fraud and asset appropriation in northern Thai Nguyen province in late 1980s, Dung killed an inmate. After that, the man, born in 1959, escaped from prison.

In Canada, Dung changed his named to Lai Thanh Huu. Since 2003, he has come to Vietnam 35 times as an overseas businessman.

Source: Xinhua