November 5, 2025
On November 4, 2025, in Berlin – the center of European press freedom – a trial took place that perhaps never before had Vietnamese observers paid so much attention to: on one side was Vietnam’s richest billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong and his beloved carmaker VinFast; on the other side was an independent journalist – Le Trung Khoa, owner of online news page thoibao.de.
Result? After many months of fighting with lawyers and lawsuits, the „Vietnamese tycoon“ lost almost everything, winning only one sentence out of dozens of statements being sued.
Journalist Le Trung Khoa (left), acitivist Hue Nhu (center), and exiled human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai (right) at the Berlin court on November 4, 2025
When money meets freedom
In Vietnam, those who dare to “touch” crony capitalist groups often disappear with their articles. But in Germany, where the law does not have a “command from above,” billionaireVuong had to learn a bitter lesson: you cannot buy justice with money, no matter how rich you are.
The Berlin court, with its cold European style, flatly rejected most of the plaintiff’s requests. The biggest shock was not in the content, but in the bill: VinFast and its owner Vuong had to bear up to 80% of the litigation costs – that is, not only losing in honor but also losing heavily in money.
In Vietnam, this kind of verdict would certainly be labeled “lacking in constructive spirit” but in Germany, it is just a normal working day for an independent judiciary.
