Suspect Togolese abscond after US$5m rice deal
07-OCT-2008 Intellasia | Thanhniennews
Oct 7, 2008 - 7:00:00 AM
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Several men purporting to be from Togo have vanished without a trace after negotiating a US$5 million rice contract with a Vietnamese exporter.
A Thanh Nien investigation sparked off by the exporter has found that the men probably used fake identities to cheat the local company.
In mid-September, Pham Hong Thang, 32, head of the Export-Import Department of the HCM City-based Saigon Xanh Trading & Service (Satraser) Joint-Stock Company, phoned Thanh Nien saying he was negotiating a very questionable rice contract with a group of men from Togo.
He said a month earlier a man named Sam Passngo, who said he was working for the Togolese government Office, had emailed and phoned him saying a Togolese firm was seeking to buy a large amount of rice from Vietnam.
Passngo then asked Thang to contact Solomon Ashala, who was said to be an assistant of the Togolese government Office, to initiate contract negotiations.
Ashala told Thang that the Togolese government would dispatch Raymond Placess, who was working for the Togolese government's diplomacy office in Spain, to Vietnam to work with Thang on September 24.
But Thanh discovered that the office addresses of Sam Passngo and Raymond Placess in Togo and Spain respectively appeared to be non-existent. He also found it curious that the men had agreed to pay US$5 million in cash for the rice.
Thanh Nien then joined Thang to meet with the group of Togolese men to get to the bottom of the case.
The negotiations
On September 24, a Thanh Nien correspondent and Thang met with Raymond Placess and his so-called assistant, Smith Kambo, at the Equatorial Hotel in HCM City's District 5.
The two men said they had brought with them US$5 million in cash which was being stored at a warehouse in HCM City's Tan Son Nhat Airport, given the strict Vietnamese regulations on the transport of cash from abroad.
But the two Togolese men reassured Thang they had been entrusted by the Togolese government to carry the cash.
An hour later, the Togolese duo agreed to sign the rice contract despite the fact that it had no official seal from Satraser.
The two foreigners then asked Thang to lend them US$5,500 to "carry out the paperwork for Vietnamese authorities to get the cash from the airport warehouse."
Thang declined to lend the money then and deferred it to September 27. But on that day and three ensuing days, Thanh Nien and Thang tried to contact the two Togolese men at the phone number they'd given, but they could not be reached.
On October 1st, Thanh Nien contacted the Equatorial Hotel management and was told no foreign men named Raymond Placess and Smith Kambo had stayed there.
The city's Immigration Department also confirmed that no Raymond Placess or Smith Kambo had traveled to Vietnam since September.
Thanh Nien's efforts to contact other men belonging to the group have also been unsuccessful.
This incident comes on the heels of a slew of news reports about foreigners resorting to petty thefts, scams, begging and even blackmail.
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