A Vietnamese former state oil executive, Trinh Xuan Thanh, who was allegedly kidnapped from Germany was on Monday jailed for life for embezzlement.
Former Politburo member Dinh La Thang, who once chaired the board of PetroVietnam, was also sentenced to 13 years in prison on Monday.
Twenty other officials were also sentenced on Monday, receiving between 22 years in prison and 13 months suspended sentence.
State-owned VNExpress said the punishment was intended to send a warning to the public about “abuse of power and rampant violation of the law”.
The blockbuster trial involving 21 other officials, including an ex-politburo member, has gripped a country where the affairs of the powerful are normally kept secret.
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But Vietnam’s conservative leadership is waging a massive anti-communist sweep that mirrors China’s crackdown on graft.
Trinh Xuan Thanh, the former head of state-run PetroVietnam Construction (PVC) was sentenced to “14 years for mismanagement and life in prison for embezzlement”, according to state-run VNExpress news site.
The jury said “no-one at PVC dared use money with the wrong purposes” without Thanh’s direction, according to VNExpress.
The embezzlement charges carry a maximum sentence of death, but the tariff was reduced after prosecutors recommended life instead.
Thanh faces a second separate trial later this week for embezzlement that could see him put to death.
The oilman was seeking asylum in Germany when he was plucked from a Berlin park by Vietnamese security agents last year, in a brazen Cold-War era episode German officials called a “scandalous violation” of its sovereignty.
Hanoi insists Thanh returned to Hanoi voluntarily to turn himself in, but the incident sparked a diplomatic dust-up, with Berlin expelling two senior Vietnamese diplomats.
