Canadian's life sentence reduced

Canadian's life sentence reduced

HANOI (AFP): A court in Ho Chi Minh City has reduced a life sentence handed down to a Canadian citizen for fraud to 20 years in jail, a court official said yesterday.

Tran Trieu Quan, a Canadian of Vietnamese origin, was sentenced in January to life in jail for defrauding a Vietnamese state company of more than a million dollars after signing a contract to provide the firm with cotton.

According to the court official, the sentence was cut because Quan had agreed to reimburse the state company for its losses.

Vietnamese courts have been handing down tougher sentences for fraud and corruption but the application of the law remains arbitrary with many cases going unpunished.