The Handico chairman (C) being taken back to Hanoi in August

Vietnamese prosecutors approved Monday a police request to hold a top official from a state-owned property firm for three months on gambling charges.

Le Kim Minh, 52, deputy general director of the Hanoi Housing Development and Investment Corporation (Handico), was arrested last month for his involvement in a gambling case in which eight other Handico officials were also taken in.

The eight were caught gambling during a police raid on a hotel in the hill resort town of Tam Dao near Hanoi.

They told the police that Minh too had been gambling with them, but fled when they arrived.

The officers found over US$10,800 at the scene.

Handico chairman Nguyen Van Kien, another deputy general director, Do Huu Dung, and chief accountant Nguyen Manh Hao too are in custody for three months.

The scam has attracted great notoriety because of its similarity to the PMU-18 corruption case that rocked the transport ministry and brought down a deputy minister. That case too first came to light with the PMU-18 chief being arrested for gambling.

Handico general director Hoang Kim Anh claimed that the men had not been aware they were breaking the law.

At Least 52 Dead In Mekong Delta Bridge Collapse

The death toll in Wednesday morning’s Can Tho bridge collapse in Vietnam has risen to least 52 with more than 150 others injured, police have said.

More people remain stuck in the rubble, officials at the scene.

However, with just one crane arriving at the disaster scene by Wednesday evening to move the rubble, rescue work was proceeding slowly.

The police said earlier there had been around 100 workers directly beneath the section that collapsed at 08:30 am at the start of the morning shift. Another 150 had been on the bridge.

"The top priority now is rescue work," Deputy Minister of Transport Ngo Thinh Duc told Vietnam Television. "The most difficult task now is to remove the huge fallen concrete blocks to save the people trapped underneath."

He said about 150 troops had been mobilized for the rescue work.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, currently in New York for the United Nations general assembly, sent a message urging authorities to mount a rapid rescue operation and investigate the cause of the accident.

By 5 pm Wednesday, just a few survivors had been found.

One of them, Vu Van Cuong, told Thanh Nien he had heard people screaming for help from beneath where he had been under the rubble.

“I heard a guy speaking to his mother on the mobile phone saying, ‘Mom, save me’,” a sobbing Cuong said.

Asked why collapsed, some officials and construction engineers told Thanh Nien that rains could have softened the foundation.

That could have, in turn, caused the scaffolding system to collapse, leading to the collapse of parts of the 90-meter section of the 2.75 km long bridge. It had only been built Tuesday.

The shock wave triggered by the collapse knocked down two nearby cafeterias.

Construction of the bridge started in September 2004 using Official Development Assistance from Japan. The US$300 million bridge was expected to be completed next year.

It is being built across the Hau river to link Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces, with the disaster occurring on the Vinh Long province side.
Thanh Nien