Vietnam’s crypto crime clause meets its first real challenge
Point d of Article 190 would reach intermediaries who never intended a crime, and the Law and Justice Committee already recommends dropping it during the pilot.
Vietnam’s National Assembly on 27 October debated the draft amended Penal Code, and the crypto provision drew the sharpest objection of the morning. Delegate Nguyen Ngoc Viet of Hanoi challenged point d, clause 1 of Article 190, which covers organising, carrying out or brokering crypto asset transactions aimed at illegal acts. He called the legal boundary too broad and vague.
The dispute inside the drafting process is now public. The Standing Committee of the Law and Justice Committee recommended not adding the clause at all, because the crypto market is still in its pilot phase. The explanatory report argued for keeping it, while conceding that intermediaries may not know the purpose behind other people’s crimes.
The explanatory report’s own concession undercuts the clause. Viet argued that profit earned or damage caused cannot substitute for the offender’s subjective fault. Without a clear fault test, he said, lawful platform operators facing criminal risk will defend themselves by refusing legitimate transactions too, which would hollow out the pilot’s efficiency.
He asked the drafting body to sharpen point d so it defines intentional fault, describes the prohibited act precisely, and excludes intermediaries acting lawfully inside the pilot. He anchored the request in Resolution 68-NQ/TW, which separates criminal liability from administrative and civil liability in economic relations. If the boundary cannot be settled now, he proposed leaving point d out entirely, since serious violations already sit under other Penal Code offences.
The amended code takes effect on 1 March 2027. Whether point d survives, and in what wording, is the open question operations teams face before that date.（Vietnam Crypto Exchange）