Hanoi (VNA) – The Vingroup Joint Stock Company (Vingroup) announced that it on September 8 initiated a civil lawsuit, reported to authorities and sent documents to embassies regarding 68 domestic and foreign organisations and individuals posting false information about the company on the Internet.

Vingroup's determination to fight against acts of distortion, fabrication, and intentional manipulation of public opinion is not only to protect the legitimate rights of enterprises, but also for the benefit of society as well as the dignity of the law.

The 68 organisations and individuals sued are account holders of information pages and personal pages that have distorted and provided false information about Vingroup; fabricated information about its Chairman Pham Nhat Vuong and a number of its other senior leaders on social networking platforms such as Tiktok, Facebook, and Youtube.

Specifically, they misled information about Vingroup's financial situation. Social media accounts reported that the group was about to go bankrupt due to a debt of 800 trillion VND (30.3 billion USD). In fact, according to Vingroup's consolidated financial report publicly posted on its website, the total debt is only about 283 trillion VND, and the debt-to-equity ratio is only about 1.8 times. This is a very safe index for businesses according to international and Vietnamese practices. The remaining "payables" are mostly prepaid revenue from customers/partners and other payables and receivables arising from normal business activities like any other business, and are completely consistent with the scale of the group.

They also defamed the quality and distorting the origin of Vingroup's products, such as social media accounts labeling electric cars and motorbikes produced by VinFast as Chinese vehicles "disguised" as Vietnamese ones. In fact, VinFast has mastered the production chain from research and design to product manufacturing. Most of the stages are carried out in Vietnam with a localisation rate of 60% at present, which is expected to raise to 80% in the future.

The sued organisations and individuals also fabricated information about Vingroup leaders, especially Chairman Pham Nhat Vuong, provided false information about its employees submitting mass resignations. In addition, they distorted legal issues regarding Vingroup products; fabricated political issues and State policies to mislead public opinion, implying that they are related to the group.

💖 According to Vietnamese law, the above acts violated the provisions of the 2018 Law on Cyber Security and the 2015 Penal Code and the civil rights of related organisations and individuals. On the international level, the dissemination of false information, and infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of organisations and individuals are also severely punished by civilised countries./.