Reference situation:

A company is going to provide a security service. However, the legal representative of the company (Vietnamese nationality) is having the criminal record for causing injury intentionally under a 4-year sentence. The company would like to consult lawyers about the legal conditions for providing this service.

Legal grounds:

1. Decree No. 96/2016/ND-CP on security order conditions for some conditional business lines
2. Circular No. 42/2017/TT-BCA detailing some articles of Decree No. 96/2016/ND-CP on security order conditions for some conditional business lines

Our legal advice:

Under the law of Vietnam, there is no business license for security service. However, the company must obtain a license of security order eligibility before it provides this service.

According to Article 11 of Decree No. 96/2016/ND-CP, the company must satisfy the following legal conditions on security order:

• The company is established legally under the law of Vietnam
• The person responsible for security order of the company:

– Has been involved in the initiation of a criminal case which is being investigated, prosecuted or on trial by Vietnamese or foreign competent authority

– Has criminal record on committing offenses against national security or other intentional offenses under more than a 03-year sentence, which is not expunged; is in the postponement period for serving imprisonment penalty; is serving community sentence (non-custodial); is prohibited from holding certain positions, doing some business lines conditional to the security order, residence or under mandatory supervision, by the court.

– Is applied compulsory education measures a commune; will be applied administrative handling measures; is addicted to drugs; is temporarily postponed or suspended from being kept in a correctional institution or a rehabilitation center; was applied administrative handling measures but the administrative-violated record was not expunged.

For the regulations above, the company does not satisfy the legal conditions in providing security service because of its legal representative. To rectify this problem, the legal representative of the company can authorize a person who will be in charge of security order in the Certificate of security order eligibility.

Please click here to refer to the procedures for the issuance of certificate of security order eligibility