If a court hearing were a football game, the verdict handed down by the press chamber of the Berlin regional court on Tuesday afternoon was 4:3. The court explained four controversial statements by the German-Vietnamese Exiljournalisten Trung Khoa Le about Vietnam’s Vingroup conglomerate and its boss Pham Nhat Vượng was legally permissible, while it prohibited three statements.
As founder, owner and editor-in-chief, Lê runs the exile medium Thoibao (“Die Zeit”), which is influential in Vietnam and among Vietnamese abroad. From the Berlin Dong Xuan Center, he publishes on the website thoibao.de, on Facebook and YouTube and, according to his own statements, receives up to 100 million hits per month. Because of repeated threats, Lê is under police protection in Berlin.
In the process, which, according to Lê’s lawyer, Slapp lawsuit (Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation or strategic lawsuit against public participation) is now about seven Vietnamese-language Facebook and YouTube reels. The now 54-year-old Lê published it between March 2023 and August 2025.
The large private corporation Vingroup, best known for its electric car division, filed a joint lawsuit Vinfastand its founder and boss Phạm Nhật Vượng. The multiple billionaire is the richest Vietnamese. In August, his company said it asked 68 Vietnamese-language media outlets, bloggers and influencers inside and outside Vietnam to withdraw critical reports about the company. Because Lê did not comply, Vingroup and Vượng took Lê to court in Berlin through a Cologne media law firm.
Reports of alleged problems at Vingroup
The contested critical statements concerned the size of Vingroup’s debts and alleged difficulties in paying the high interest rates, the group’s alleged declaration of Chinese products as Vietnamese products, and rumors of an exit ban imposed on Vượng by Vietnam’s authorities. Also contested were the alleged commitment of company employees to electric cars, the alleged lack of testing of Vinfast cars before export and the alleged sale of inventory at a subsidiary.
To the astonishment of some, the Berlin district court declared itself responsible for this internal Vietnamese dispute in November a similar case by Vinfast against Lê. Then as now, he accuses CEO Vượng of becoming a stooge of the authoritarian regime in Hanoi. Lê’s reports, a mixture of riotous journalism and sensitive insider information from leadership circles in the one-party state, are a thorn in the side.
In 2017, Lê uncovered the kidnapping of a business executive who had fled to Berlin. According to the Berlin Court of Appeal, the person responsible for the kidnapping was then security minister and current party leader Tô Lâm responsible. He wants to secure a second term in office at the party conference starting on January 19th.
After Lê initially won 80 percent of the lawsuit brought by Vinfast in November, according to the court’s cost allocation, the people’s court in Hanoi suddenly indicted him. On December 31, he was convicted of “the crime of producing, storing, disseminating and disseminating information and documents directed against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” sentenced to 17 years in prison.
The reasons for the judgment are not yet available
Right at the start of the trial on Tuesday, both sides rejected an amicable settlement. In the end, the ruling prohibited Lê from making any statements about the ban on leaving the country, the obligation of Vingroup employees to have electric vehicles and the group’s debt, under threat of a fine of 250,000 euros or six months’ imprisonment. However, his other statements were accepted. The court has not yet provided a reason.
“This is the third lawsuit against me within three months,” Lê told the taz after the verdict. “Although most of the charges were dismissed by the court, this represents significant pressure from abroad on my freedom of the press in Germany.” According to the state Zeitung Vietnamnet The government called on companies and private individuals to file lawsuits against critical voices. In the Reporters Without Borders press freedom rankings Vietnam is ranked 173rd out of 180 nations.