As prescribed by labour law, competent state authorities can investigate Employees who commit the acts of theft, embezzlement, gambling, deliberately injuring others, using drugs in the workplace, revealing trade secrets, technological know-how, infringing the Employer’s intellectual property rights, causing serious damage or threatening to cause extremely serious damage to the Employer’s properties and interests. Pending the investigation results and conclusions of the competent state authorities, Employers are not allowed to impose disciplinary actions on Employees[1]. So, regarding serious violations such as theft, embezzlement, gambling, deliberately injuring others, using drugs, Employees must take responsibilities for their acts according to not only the ILRs and Labor Code but also the regulations of criminal law. Criminal investigation agencies will then have the right to investigate the concerned Employees to collect evidence and give conclusions about Employees’ violations.
Pursuant to Article 5 of the Law on organisation of criminal investigation bodies, the Investigation Police is organised into 3 levels: The Investigation Police of the Ministry of Public Security; the provincial level Investigation Police and the district-level Investigation Police. As such, the ward police will not have the authority to conduct an investigation in this case. Accordingly, upon detecting violations, Employers will lodge a denunciation letter with the investigation police of the district where the violations are committed. Based on these denunciation letters, the investigation police will categorise and handle criminal denunciation letters, prosecute the cases under their authority or forward them to other competent agencies; and they also instruct the commune, ward or town police, Police Stations to perform the duty of receiving, examining and preliminarily verifying criminal denunciation letters[2]. At the same time, Employers can also lodge a written settlement request with the same content with the provincial level/city investigation bodies to put more pressure on the investigation progress at the district-level investigation police.
However,
if Employers have tried to convince the police to receive criminal denunciation
letters by presenting legal grounds but the letters are rejected, Employers
should prepare and send criminal denunciation letters along with evidence by
registered mail to the headquarter of that police investigation body. In case
the police reject the letters, they must indicate the reason and give a written
answer to Employers.
[1]Articles 123.4 (c) and 126.1 Labor Code
[2]Article 21 Law on organisation of criminal investigation bodies