Potomac Man Is Released From Vietnamese Prison

Educator, Held 14 Months Without Trial, Still Confined to Hanoi

A Potomac resident who was imprisoned in Vietnam without trial for nearly 14 months has been released from custody, according to U.S. and Vietnamese officials.

Although no longer detained, Hoan Dinh Nguyen has not been cleared of the accusations that led to his arrest: that he embezzled money from an international school he helped establish in the Vietnamese capital. He has denied the allegations.

"Our understanding is that although he's been released from prison, he's been confined to the city of Hanoi," said Steve Royster, State Department spokesman for consular affairs. "We will continue to monitor the legal proceedings, and we would hope that he receives fair treatment under the law."

Cuong Nguyen, an official at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, said the businessman had been released "on a probationary basis." He said the investigation is continuing and is being conducted in "a transparent manner and in accordance with Vietnamese law."

Hoan Nguyen, 57, was born in Vietnam, left in the late 1960s and has been a U.S. citizen for more than three decades. He is an international businessman and an educator with degrees from George Mason and Vanderbilt universities.

From the day of his arrest, April 6, 2006, Nguyen and his wife had no direct contact -- until the morning of May 25, when her telephone rang before daybreak.

"I thought I was still dreaming," Yen H. Nguyen said in an interview.

For a moment, as happiness filled her, she could not believe it was true, she said. "He said, 'Yes, this is me! This is me! I have been released!"

Hoan Nguyen told his wife that he was healthy, she said, and he described his diet in prison: instant noodles, rice and soup.

He has since been able to meet regularly with officials at the U.S Embassy, she said. Yen Nguyen, also born in Vietnam, said she will not travel to Hanoi because she fears she, too, might be detained.

Hoan Nguyen's release comes less than a month before the first scheduled Washington visit by a postwar Vietnamese president and at a time of escalating tensions between the two countries, former enemies that have become trade partners. The June 22 meeting had reportedly been in doubt after President Bush met recently with several Vietnamese American proponents of democracy.

Royster said he had no information about how Nguyen's release came about.

Nguyen and a group of investors entered into a joint venture with a Vietnamese government agency to establish the Hanoi International School in 1996. The investors provided a little more than $2.4 million in cash and loans, and their Vietnamese partners provided a 20-year lease, valued at $272,000, to a property in Hanoi's embassy district, according to notes prepared by Nguyen before his arrest.

The venture had problems from the beginning because of disputes between the U.S. and Vietnamese sides. It took the intervention of Vietnamese ministries to prod the Vietnamese side to yield the land as promised, the notes say.

Government agencies have investigated the school in recent years. One report, issued in January, found that the school's board and managers "have committed many serious transgression[s]," including unsubstantiated or unjustified expenses charged to the school's accounts.

On April 6, 2006, Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security arrested Nguyen, holding him at a detention center known as B14. He has had no formal legal proceeding, Yen Nguyen said, although a Vietnamese diplomatic note to the U.S. Embassy said he is accused of abusing his position by taking funds for personal use and "committing corrupted acts against school assets."

Cuong Nguyen, the spokesman at the Vietnamese Embassy, said the businessman is accused of "violating Vietnamese state regulations on economic management, which caused serious damage."

Hoan Nguyen told U.S. Embassy officials during a visit in June that he was innocent, according to an e-mail an official sent his wife. Some of the foreign investors and Nguyen's supporters in the United States have said they suspect that the deal's Vietnamese partners have trumped up charges against Nguyen in an effort to take control of the school, in part because it has become extremely profitable and in part because the land it occupies could be re-leased for millions of dollars.

"This is just a brazen attempt to take a successful business from a guy who set up a school to help his home country develop," said Bill Lynch, a family friend who served with Hoan on the George Mason board of visitors in the early 1990s.