New Law on Laws in Vietnam

A new Law on Laws (Law on Laws 2015) is just issued by the National Assembly in June 2015 and will take effect from July 2016. Hopefully, a few new points of the Law on Laws 2015 (discussed below) will help to improve the quality of Vietnamese law which is notoriously vague and inconsistent. In particular,

Vietnam Investment Law 2014/Enterprise Law 2014 – Temporary guidance by Hanoi licensing authorities

The Investment Law 2014 and the Enterprise Law 2014 will take effect very soon on 1 July 2015. However, the Government has not issued any implementing Decrees or Circulars which are necessary for the actual implementation of the Investment Law 2014 and the Enterprise Law 2014. This is unfortunate as the lack of proper implementing Decrees and Circulars may affect the operations of many companies and investors.

New Decree on Legal Opinions of the Ministry of Justice

Decree 51/2015 issued in May 2015 is an entire new decree on legal opinions issued by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) of Vietnam. The MOJ has been issuing legal opinions covering various Vietnamese legal issues to support for financing various large scale infrastructure projects for many years. For the first time, Decree 51/2015 sheds some lights on MOJ’s legal opinion practice. In particular, 

What is a bribery crime in Vietnam?

Article 279 of the Criminal Code imposes criminal liability on the act of receiving bribes (tội nhận hối lộ), which is defined as an act, among others, of a person who holds an official position or power and directly or indirectly has received or will receive money, properties or other “material benefit” in any form, which has a value of VND 2,000,000 (approx. USD100) or more “with the intent of taking advantage of his/her official position or power in order to perform or refrain from performing certain acts for the benefit of, or as requested by, the person who offers the bribe”.