On July 15, the People's Committee of Hue City sent a report to the Prime Minister on the serious deforestation of protective forests in sub-area 89, Phong Quang Ward, related to signs of lax management and violations in forest land management by the leaders of Quang Cong Commune before merging administrative boundaries.
According to the report, on July 2, 2025, the local forest rangers discovered that in section 1, sub-area 89, 3.1416 hectares of forest were cut down, including 2.5843 hectares of protective forest and 0.5573 hectares of production forest. A total of 1,461 salinity trees were cut down, mainly planted forests since 2008 under the Sand Protection Forest Planting Project (Project 661).
Notably, the forest area was cut down and its capital was protected by Mr. Le Nguyen Si's group before 2020 under a contract; it was then taken over by the People's Committee of Quang Cong commune, but the management was not strict. Before the merger of communes (early 2025), the commune government arbitrarily liquidated the forest to an individual - Mr. Nguyen Van Quoc, with the reason "forests were damaged by storms".
Although the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Commune Party Committee on February 18, 2025 only agreed to liquidate the area of fallen production forests, the Commune People's Committee exceeded its authority and sold the entire protective forest - an act that was assessed as serious. The amount of 85 million VND collected from the deal was transferred by Mr. Quoc to the commune treasurer, then withdrawn and directly transferred 65 million VND to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Commune People's Committee.
Through the investigation, Mr. Nguyen Van Quoc stated: The exploitation will take place from the end of April to the beginning of May 2025, carried out by a group of people in Quang Tri. The person who pointed out the location and supervised the exploitation was the cadastral officer of Le Nguyen An commune. The wood was transported by about 10 trucks, sold to enterprises in Phu Bai Industrial Park for 900,000 VND/ton.
Mr. Nguyen Dinh Thong - former Chairman of the People's Committee of Quang Cong Commune, now Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Phong Quang Ward - admitted that he had agreed to sell 8 hectares of production forest to Mr. Quoc.
In response to the above incident, the People's Committee of Hue City has directed the City Police to investigate and strictly handle the violations. At the same time, the Department of Agriculture and Environment was assigned to coordinate with relevant units to urgently complete the case file before July 22, 2025.
