Four Vietnamese officials arrested over alleged bird flu fraud
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-14 10:55

Four village officials in northern Vietnam were arrested for allegedly inflating the number of poultry they culled while trying to stop the spread of bird flu _ a scheme that would have bilked the government of US$206,000, an official said Saturday.

The officials in charge of the local bird culling effort in Dai Dong commune near Hanoi, including commune chief Vuong Tien Dung, were taken into police custody Friday, said Tran Tien Ngot, head of the commune Communist Party organization.

They were accused of "abuse of power and authority while doing official duty," he said. The offense carries a jail sentence up to 10 years.

Vietnam has been hardest hit by bird flu, with more than 40 human deaths.
Ngot said the officials allegedly collaborated with poultry farmers to inflate hundreds of thousands of poultry said to have been culled last month.

The Vietnamese government compensates 5,000 dong (31 cents; 26 euro cents) to 15,000 dong (94 cents; 78 euro cents) for each bird culled in an effort to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Ngot said the government would have lost an estimated 3.3 billion dong (US$206,000; euro171,000), but the compensation hadn't been paid yet.

Since early October, nearly 4 million birds have died or been slaughtered in 24 affected provinces nationwide in the latest bird flu outbreak.

Bird flu has killed more than 100 million birds since it began ravaging poultry farms across Asia in 2003. It also jumped to humans killing at least 76 people in Asia _ the majority in Vietnam _ and two recent deaths in Turkey.

Health experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person, possibly sparking a global pandemic. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.