July 20, 2020
During the last few days, there has been a dispute within the internal management of the Liberal Publishing House (LPH). This dispute involves the operation and finance issues for which information was publicized on Facebook by Ms. Pham Doan Trang and Ms. Nguyen Phuong Hoa. In one of the posts from Ms. Nguyen Phuong Hoa, she mentioned "Luat Khoa," which is one of the projects Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) manages. Therefore, LIV would like to clarify the following matters:
1. LIV is a 501(c)(3) organization, registered in the United States since January 2017 with an official entity and its own bank account. Ms. Pham Doan Trang is a co-founder of LIV. She now works as an editor for Luat Khoa magazine and The Vietnamese magazine - both of which are parts of the LIV media program. Ms. Pham Doan Trang has been involved with the LPH project as her personal choice. LIV remains respectful of Ms. Pham's individual preferences for projects outside of her work at LIV.
2. LPH has been a partner of LIV, in which LIV helped accept emergency funds for LPH from a few foreign partners at the beginning of 2020. LIV sent these emergency funds from its bank account, according to instructions from Ms. Nguyen Phuong Hoa, who was LPH's representative. Because of the internal dispute in the management of LPH, LIV cannot confirm who currently has the authority to authorize the transfer of the remaining funds. As a result, we have frozen the transfer of further funds until we receive official instructions from LPH on how to handle this.
3. All of LIV's transactions regarding LPH have been done through online banking and international money transfer services. We did not use cash in any of these transactions. We have retained all records according to our accounting and financial management policies. Ever since 2017, LIV has contracted with independent auditing firms with authorized and approved CPAs to conduct annual global audits, and we have audit reports for all of the years LIV has been in operation. All of the above-mentioned transactions involving LPH will also be included in our global audit this year, ending on December 31, 2020.
4. LIV has no authority to resolve the LPH dispute. We do not judge who is right and who is wrong under this dispute. We only speak within our capacity as a partner of LPH.
5. LIV hopes that LPH and all of its staff members will respect the rule of not disclosing information about its partners without prior permission.
6. LIV calls on all sides of LPH to quickly resolve this dispute cooperatively and fairly. We hope to soon receive official instructions from LPH with the resolution details.
Respectfully yours,
(signed)
Trinh Huu Long - Co-Director