Stink of crime hangs over Vietnam chemical plant

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - This photo taken on March 19, 2026, shows Smoke and dust from the Duc Giang Lao Cai chemical plant in the Tang Loong industrial Park, Lao Cai Province, northern Vietnam. Grey and white smoke around the clock, dust-covered trees and nonstop noise: residents living next to Vietnam's biggest chemical production complex coexist with toxic fumes from the factories. — AFP pic

LAO CAI (Vietnam), March 30 — Grey and white smoke around the clock, dust-covered trees and nonstop noise: residents living next to Vietnam’s biggest chemical production complex coexist with toxic fumes from the factories.

“It smells stinky, pungent, rotten,” said 64-year-old Nguyen, who lives in a one-storey concrete house three kilometres from the Tang Loong industrial park in remote Lao Cai province and asked to be identified by one name due to security concerns.

“Even if we close the doors, the smell is still in the air,” she told AFP.

Among the largest of several firms at the industrial park is Duc Giang Chemicals Group (DGC), whose giant facilities produce yellow phosphorus and phosphoric acid.

It describes itself as one of the world’s largest exporters of yellow phosphorus—used in producing fertilisers, flame retardants and phosphoric acid—with an annual capacity of nearly 70,000 tonnes.

But police this month announced the arrest of DGC chairman Dao Huu Huyen—one of the country’s richest men—alongside his son, who was once the firm’s CEO, and five other company officers.

They were accused of “illegal dumping of millions of tonnes of waste across an area spanning tens of hectares” and illegally extracting hundreds of thousands of tons of phosphate ore, as well as tax offences.

The alleged crimes took place over an extended period and sparked “public outrage”, police said.

It is an unusually high corporate fall: DGC is a member of the VN-30 stock index and had a market capitalisation of around US$1 billion (RM4.02 billion) before the arrests came to light. Originally a state-owned company, it was partly privatised more than 20 years ago.

“There normally is a political reason why certain big domestic companies or company executives are targeted in Vietnam’s political economy,” said Miguel Chanco, an economist focused on Asia at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

But the DGC bosses’ arrests “may eventually be framed as just another case of high-level corruption”, he added.

The one-party state has pursued a sprawling, high-profile anti-corruption campaign in recent years, which has netted dozens of business leaders and senior government figures.

The sweeping drive—accelerated by top leader To Lam, who became communist party chief in 2024 -- has removed many of his opponents, according to analysts, leaving Lam as Vietnam’s most dominant leader in decades.

Andrew Wells-Dang, a Southeast Asia expert at the Washington-based Stimson Center, said authorities would have investigated the case extensively before acting.

The accusations against DGC were “probably not different from what many mining companies do, just on a larger and more blatant scale”, he added.

“If anything, what the arrests show is a negative: the Duc Giang leaders apparently do not have the level of political connections to be able to avoid this outcome.”

This photo taken on March 19, 2026, shows waste slag inside the the Duc Giang Lao Cai chemical plant in the Tang Loong industrial Park, Lao Cai Province, northern Vietnam. Grey and white smoke around the clock, dust-covered trees and nonstop noise: residents living next to Vietnam's biggest chemical production complex coexist with toxic fumes from the factories. — AFP pic

‘Nowhere to go’ 

Vietnam is a manufacturing hub—phosphoric acid is used in making semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries—and one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies. Tang Loong illustrates the trade-off in many developing countries between growth and the environment.

Government schemes drove agricultural and then industrial development in the poor, mountainous province in the 1970s, and over the years concrete roads have replaced grass-covered paths, while neighbourhoods feature newly-built villas and private cars.

“My parents were among the first ones to settle down here,” said one woman living nearby. “They were poor and had to work so hard on the hills to make ends meet.”

Now young people can earn at least 10 million dong ($380) a month at the factories—considered a reasonable wage outside Vietnam’s major cities.

“My kids all work in the industrial zone,” the woman said outside her modern two-storey house. “None of my children and grandchildren have any health problems.”

Nguyen, meanwhile, said she had become used to the smoke and noise.

“We want a better life, less polluted of course, but we have to accept the way it is,” she lamented.

“We have nowhere else to go.” — AFP