Answer:
In accordance with the Labour Code, competent State authorities can investigate any Employee who commits an act 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, or committing acts of sexual harassment in the workplace as prescribed in the ILR. Within the period of waiting for the investigation results and conclusions of the competent state authority, the Employer is not allowed to impose any disciplinary action on the Employee[1]. Therefore, regarding serious violations such as theft, embezzlement, gambling, deliberately injuring others, using drugs, the Employee not only is subject to labour discipline according to the ILR and the Labour Code but also bear criminal liability in accordance with the Criminal Code. Criminal investigation agencies will then have the right to investigate the Employee to gather evidence and give conclusions on the Employee’s violations.
In accordance with Article 5 of the Law on Organisation of Criminal Investigation Agencies, 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. The commune-level police do not have the authority to conduct a criminal investigation. Accordingly, upon detecting violations, the Employer will lodge a denunciation letter to 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, and propose for a charge under their authority or transfer the case to other competent State agencies; and they also instruct the commune-level police, Police Stations to perform the duty of receiving, examining and preliminarily verifying criminal denunciation[2]. At the same time, the Employer can also lodge a written request of the same content to the provincial investigation agencies in order to put more pressure on district-level investigation police to speed up the investigation process if necessary.
However, if the Employer has exerted effort to convince the police to receive the criminal denunciation letter by presenting legal grounds but the letter was rejected, the Employer should prepare and send a criminal denunciation letter along with evidence by registered mail to the headquarter of that police investigation agency. In case the police reject the letter, the police must indicate reason and response in writing to Employer in accordance with the law.
[1] Article 122.4 (c) and Article 125.1 and 125.2 of the Labour Code
[2] Article 21 of Law on Organisation of Criminal Investigation Agencies
