Published Wednesday, May 19, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
Thailand detains Viet exile on immigration charges. Fundraising in U.S. ran afoul of state law
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- The leader of an overseas Vietnamese anti-communist group has been detained by            Thai immigration authorities, his colleagues and Thai officials said Tuesday. Nguyen Huu Chanh, a Southern California resident who is general secretary of the self-styled ``Government of Free Vietnam,'' was detained May 12 in the southern city of Hat Yai ``for a minor infraction of immigration rules,'' said a news release faxed from his group.

The group's office is in Garden Grove, and Chanh is a resident of Westminster. Chanh was expelled from Thailand last June after holding a series of meetings with other anti-communist Vietnamese exiles. News reports at the time said he had        been declared persona non grata by Thai immigration police.

The group's news release said Chanh had been transferred to the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok and that Vietnamese government officials had been ``allowed to interrogate'' him while in custody. Thai immigration officials confirmed that Chanh was in custody, saying he was on a blacklist, but declined to give any other details. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they expected him to be deported.

Chanh has also been in trouble with authorities in the United States. In July last year, the California state Department of Corporations ordered Chanh and his associates to stop selling ``gold reserve depository bearer bonds'' which were ostensibly to raise funds for their movement.

``While the department takes no position with regard to the politics or the viability of the organization, `Government of Free Vietnam' is illegally soliciting investments in California,'' a news release quoted Commissioner of Corporations Dale E. Bonner as saying. ``Political and charitable fundraising is perfectly proper, but not if the offerings are dressed up as investments and offered through the investment marketplace,'' he said.

According to the department, ``The bond offerings were made by a British West Indian company in Barbados called the C.S.I. Ag's Corporation. The bonds purportedly pay 5.5 percent annually to the bondholders and are allegedly backed up by $500 million in gold in Chile, South America, that has yet to be mined.'' Chanh's group won attention in Thailand at the end of April last year when it held its ``Third Annual Conference of the Government of Free Vietnam'' on the Thai-Cambodian border. The event, with a claimed attendance of about 250 people, was raided by Thai police, and the group claimed it was later attacked by Cambodian troops.

Thai press reports said the group had been conducting guerrilla military training in Thailand's Trat province and that the authorities cracked down after a protest from the government of Vietnam. The group claims to have bases inside Cambodia, which is a neighbor of Vietnam.