‘Economic Criminal’ Shot In Saigon

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31009, 15 March 1966, Page 17

‘Economic Criminal’ Shot In Saigon

f.XZ. Press Association —Copyright) SAIGON, March 14. The South Vietnamese Government sent one “economic criminal” to the execution stake early today and, within hours, sentenced another to die before the firing squad, United Press International reported.

The special economic crime court handed down a death sentence to Dang Cao Sach, a 52-year-old Government treasurer in Dalat province. He was convicted of embezzling more than seven million piastres from the Treasury safe and replacing it with old newspapers, lottery slips and scrap paper trimmed to resemble stacks of currency. Sach broke down in court and told the red-clad judges that he did steal the money but he pleaded that he only took one million piastres and not seven million. Poker Losses He said he took the money bit by bit to pay losses in poker and lottery drawing He was sentenced to die hours after a Vietnamese military firing squad executed a Chinese millionaire businessman for war profiteering. The tycoon died while his weeping wife and eight children

tried to break through barbed wire barricades and rush to his side. The distraught wife of the chubby millionaire, Ta Vinh, aged 35, screamed “political execution” as she tried to get through the concertina rolls of barbed wire and wooden barricades set up by South Vietnamese soldiers and national police to hold back the crowd gathered to watch Vinh shot. “This couldn't happen in a civilised country,” Vinh’s at-

tractive 31-year-old wife shouted. Two national policemen tried to hold her, but with her one free fist clenched, she knocked them aside. They wrestled with her and the children, and other policemen ran up and managed to keep the family behind the barricades. Vinh was convicted of price speculation, hoarding and bribery in a one-day trial last Monday by a special court set up to stamp out corruption.