On the afternoon of April 25, at the monthly press conference and briefing in May, Mr. Pham S – Vice Chairman of Lam Dong Provincial People’s Committee – announced that the locality would officially terminate the operation of Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company at Dinh I.
The People’s Committee of Da Lat city was assigned to continue conserving and caring for the palace to prevent it from degrading; at the same time, it was assigned to develop a plan for the auction of the leasehold of Dinh I.
Dinh I Da Lat.
According to the report of the Department of Finance on April 22, the department has organized meetings with relevant departments, agencies, and Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company, thereby determining the total investment up to December 31, 2022 at over 112 billion VND. After deducting over 36 billion VND of depreciation and nearly 3 billion VND of Dinh I rent, the actual amount Lam Dong province has to refund to the investor when withdrawing the project is nearly 73 billion VND.
The Department of Finance proposed that the state budget immediately refund nearly 56 billion VND to Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company; the remaining over 17 billion VND will be included in the auction plan so that the winning bidder can continue to pay the enterprise.
In addition, Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company proposed that the province pay an additional amount of nearly 29 billion VND incurred to date. However, this request was not accepted by the relevant agencies because this was the amount invested after the province withdrew and terminated the project investment.
As reported by Tien Phong newspaper, during the years 2014-2015, Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company was leased land (50 years) and forest by the Provincial People’s Committee to implement the King Palace project with a total investment of 700 billion VND.
In 2020, the Government Inspectorate pointed out many violations and requested the province to withdraw the project. Specifically, Lam Dong leased the house and land of Dinh I to Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company to implement the King Palace project while this was not included in the land use plan for the period of 2011-2015, which violated the Land Law. On the other hand, the leasing of the house, land of Dinh I, and villas on the land area of 1.86 hectares without auction violated Article 43 of Decree No. 52/2009/NĐ-CP.
In 2021, the Lam Dong Provincial People’s Committee issued a document to terminate the operation of the King Palace project and assigned the related units to implement it. In November 2023, the Da Lat City People’s Committee issued a notice of the time of termination of the lease contract at the King Palace project after 60 days.
Hoan Cau Joint Stock Company did not comply with this notice and made a petition, but the Lam Dong Provincial People’s Committee continued to request that the investor comply with the termination of the King Palace project. The Department of Natural Resources and Environment has invited company representatives to work three times to reclaim land and request land handover, but all were unsuccessful.
One of the issues raised by the investor was that at that time, the amount of money calculated by the locality to refund the investment costs (58.6 billion VND) in the King Palace project was much lower than the amount of money the enterprise had invested in this area.
