Hanoi - Officials at a Vietnamese sugar company said Monday their CEO had yet to quit, despite local media reports he had tendered his resignation after sustaining heavy losses on 1.1 million dollars in company funds he had invested in Vietnam's plunging stock market, without the consent of the company's managing board. Pham Nhu Hoa of La Nga Sugar Joint Stock Company in Dong Nai province, 60 kilometers north of Ho Chi Minh City, asked for permission to resign from the posts of CEO and general director at a board meeting over the weekend, the news website VnExpress reported Monday.
But officials of the company said Hoa had not resigned.
"We haven't seen any letter of resignation from our boss," said the secretary of the company's managing board, Chu Thi Hue.
Hoa, reached by telephone, declined to comment, saying the matter was an internal company affair.
Hoa used 17.7 billion dong (1.1 million dollars) of the company's money to buy shares of 10 companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Center in late 2007, according to VnExpress.
The shares Hoa bought had lost some 6 billion dong (375,000 dollars) in value by the end of April, following the sharp fall of Vietnam's stock market. The VN-Index closed Monday at 521, down more than 43.4 per cent from the beginning of the year.
VnExpress said Hoa had promised to sell the shares to repay the company by the end of June this year. It said police are investigating the case.
