Visa violations & tax evasion ended in $154K fine to 191 foreigners

From Tuoi Tre News issued yesterday, Saturday Aug 17:

"... 191 foreigners were found with such violations as conducting business illegally, supporting online gambling, operating e-commerce, providing stock information, and making online sales, according to the [Tourist] Department.

They were handed fines totaling nearly 3.6 billion (US$154,000).

Five foreigners who were found offering illegal travel services in Vietnam were fined 105 million ($4,500) and forced to exit Vietnam prematurely.

Twenty-nine others, who entered Vietnam on tourist visas, did not follow their packaged tour programs. They were handed combined fines of 460 million ($19,700) and placed under authority monitoring.

Seven accommodation services in Da Nang were also slapped with administrative fines of 15 million ($645) in total for failing to declare their temporary foreign residents with local authorities.

Over 1 billion ($43,000) in tax arrears and fines were collected from six local travel companies during the period, the municipal tourism department said."

Tuoi Tre News

In order to be more truthful to the actual happening, I didn't use the newspaper's more sensational headline.

Any indication of the country of origin of these violators?  I expect it may be readable between the lines but I couldn't see it explicitly stated in the article.  Perhaps you may see it in the Vietnamese language edition.  I always have the impression that Tuoi Tre English version is quite sanitized.

The ones involved in illegal gambling are Chinese:  see photo caption.

The ones in this video, from different groups, are Chinese and Korean (based on the document on the background computer). 

The ones involved in illegal travel services are from South Korea.  Five of them were deported, perhaps because their intake was high (105M).

As for the 12 hotels that didn't report their guests, I couldn't find out the nationality of the owers.  Six companies that issued fake visas and/or evaded tax have to pay 1 billion in fine.

While we're at it, a different fine was issued to 9 hotels for causing environmental pollution by discard their waste water to the sea.  The hotels are Balcona Đà Nẵng, TMS Luxury, Risemount Premier Đà Nẵng, Parosand Đà Nẵng, Paris Deli, Lê Hoàng, Hùng Anh, Parze Ocean, and Gemma.  For the same misdeed, 3 more hotels (Sea Front, Misa, and Sea Castle) are under serious investigation.

A slew of hotels are also in trouble for erecting more rooms onto the premises than their plan were approved.

One of the links I provided was under review and I cannot go back to edit the description.  The violators shown in that article are either Chinese or Korean.

I haven't been able to find information on the ethnicities of the other violators (conducting business illegally, operating e-commerce, providing stock information, and making online sales.)