‘Fines don’t concern me’: ‘mega’ company CEO speaks up after dissolution

Nguyen Vu Quoc Anh, CEO and the legal representative of the Ho Chi Minh City-based company, told VnExpress on Sunday the fine "would not be much", and he is not ashamed as he had dared to think of such big plans.

"I am the one who started all this. The pioneer often receives criticism but after this someone will learn from me and achieve bigger success."

Auto Investment Group, registered as a computer programming company, made headlines last May when Anh tried raising VND500 trillion in capital, or 6 percent of Vietnam's 2021 GDP, far exceeding the market cap of Vietnam's biggest companies like Vingroup, Vietcombank and Hoa Phat Group.

The company recently announced its dissolution.

The punishment for a company failing to mobilize the registered capital after 90 days is at most VND100 million.

"The company actually stopped operating since September last year. Now we are working with tax authorities to complete procedures for dissolution," he said.

After dissolving the firm, Anh said he is now spending time to reconsider his relationships and seek better partners to develop new projects after Tet, Vietnam’s biggest annual holiday which falls on Feb. 1.

Auto Investment Group was registered at Bitexco Financial Tower in HCMC but without a single employee present.

The company initially targeted a revenue of $1 billion this year.

Anh said in early June that although he did not have money, he knew how to raise funds from other sources and listed several major banks and big real estate companies in Vietnam that he would partner with.

None of those companies have officially confirmed they would partner with Anh.

In 2020, three people in Hanoi registered a company, USC Interco, with an unusually high charter capital of VND144 trillion.

But one of the shareholders later said the other two had made a mistake when registering because they were drunk.