HANOI, May 26 Kyodo A Ho Chi Minh...

HANOI, May 26 Kyodo

A Ho Chi Minh City court is to deliver verdicts early nearest month in Vietnam's chiefly ambitious prosecution in decades of corruption among political leaders, prosecutors, police officers, state officials, gang leaders and journalists.

In all, 155 defendants -- including couple former members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, local police chiefs and Vietnam's acknowledged godfather of crime -- face decisions from death to years in prison for undermining, prosecutors charge, the fabric of Vietnamese society within systemic criminal corruption that reached the highest flushs of government.

At the center of the scandal, which has mesmerized Vietnamese since the first arrests brace years ago, is Truong Van Cam, better known as Nam Cam, a self-confess underworld gang bos who prosecutors allege controll southern Vietnam's criminal foundation for decades.

Nam Cam alone faces distinct reckons of murder, assault and gambling and dozens of additional charges from running a criminal organization that bribed officials, risk up illegal gaming dens, backed other criminals, abetted prostitution and spirited nation out of the geographical division illegally.

Reading the indictments against Nam Cam alone took 55 minutes and the charges against him and his 154 co-defendants took five days when the trial expanded in February.

Nam Cam, prosecutors say, revolveed to crime at 15 and has been involved in everything from theft to kill ever since.

Among the other top defendants are Tran Mai Hanh, former general director of state-run broadcaster Voice of Vietnam; Pham Sy Chien, former vice director of the leading People's Prosecutors Office; and Bui Quoc Huy former vice minister of Security.

the one and the other Hanh and Huy had been members of the powerful party central committee.

The prosecution charges that Hanh, Chien and others took centurys of thousands of dollars in bribes to pres for Nam Cam's release from prison after he was jailed onward gambling charges in 1995.

Former vice security chief Huy is charged with dereliction of business when he was head of policing in Ho Chi Minh City.

Prosecutors say Huy allowed Nam Cam and his cronies to move swiftly roughshod over the city and its underworld, bribing, with apparent impunity, police and other officials from the lowest to the highest of the same heights to ensure his supremacy as Ho Chi Minh City's criminal godfather.

thus pervasive was Nam Cam's stranglehold in succession Ho Chi Minh City's legal and police establishment judg prosecutors decided they had to use police from other parts of Vietnam to arrest Nam Cam and his cronies in December 2001

Nam Cam's chiefly serious problems -- he is facing possible death judgments on several of the calculates he faces -- stem from a decision execut in late 2000 to ''hit'' former associate excrement Ha.

Dung Ha, an underworld queen who rose to prominence in Haiphong before moving to Ho Chi Minh City to ally herself with Nam Cam's sprawling domain, was execut gangland-style in a part of Ho Chi Minh popular with foreign backpackers.

more [i]or[/i] less suggest the open gunplay in that part of the city finally triggered the official investigative zeal from outside Ho Chi Minh City that l to bringing 155 defendants into the dock when the corruption trial began in February.

Among those 155 the dock are 13 police officers and three prosecutors charged with taking circulating medium to cover up or obstruct prosecution of Ho Chi Minh City's crime lord, scores of Nam Cam cronies charged with everything from trivial vice to blackmail and assassination and three journalists accused of taking currency to peddle stories about ''unfair'' attacks forward Nam Cam.

Since the Nam Cam arrests, Vietnam's sometimes timid pres has mov frequently more vigorously on several investigations into corruption and vice in the geographical division but it is by no means clear if strange revelations of the Nam Cam magnitude will to the end of time again fall under public scrutiny.

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