Minister of Transport Dinh La Thang decided to set up an inspection teamto look into expressway projects contracted to the Republic of Korea’sPOSCO Engineering and Construction (E&C) on April 9.

The inspection team includes six members from the Ministry ofTransport, its Finance Departments, Department of Science andTechnology, and Department of Transport Construction and QualityManagement, headed by the Ministry’s Deputy Chief Inspector Le Van Doan.

The inspectors will look into the process ofselecting contractors, assessing and making payments, looking for anypossible wrongdoings and violation of law.

Based onthe results, the inspectors will make proposals to improve Statemanagement capacity and ensure the transparency of transportconstruction projects.

The same day, Kwon Sang Kee,an executive in charge of the Southeast Asian branch of POSCO E&C,sent a document to the Vietnam Ministry of Transport and the VietnamExpressway Corporation (VEC) in which he apologised for the nuisancethat the company caused to the ministry and VEC.

Hecited the slush fund scandal of 10 billion won (8.9 million USD) by aformer POSCO E&C executive in 2009-2012, saying furtherinvestigation is underway.

Earlier, Deputy Ministerof Transport Nguyen Hong Truong said the ministry did not receive anyofficial information relating to news reports that POSCO E&C wasimplicated in the creation of a slush fund in a construction project inVietnam .

He said POSCO E&C was in charge ofthree construction packages for the Noi Bai-Lao Cai Expressway, fundedby the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

He said thatall bids for the 1.2 billion USD expressway's eight constructionpackages, which were implemented between 2009 and 2014, followedinternational regulations, were supervised by international donors, andall processes were implemented and inspected carefully.

The Ministry of Transport has not interfered into payment methodsbetween the contractor and its sub-contractors given these are theirrights, he added.-VNA