Chapter 44 — Shrimp Street Without Name

Minh Khang contacted Hai Yen again one morning, his voice full of excitement. "Ms. Yen, my colleague in the Central region, just connected me with a family that was directly affected by Mr. Vinh's project seven years ago. They agreed to talk to you, if you want."

Hai Yen agreed immediately, arranging a video call the same evening. That family is Mr. and Mrs. Tu Hanh, former heads of an aquaculture cooperative in a small fishing village in Quang Ngai province, who lost their position, lost their property, and almost got caught up in legal trouble in a case that has many surprising similarities to her father's case.

“I heard your story through the article,” Mr. Tu Hanh said through the screen, his voice trembling with emotion. "I didn't expect that after seven years, someone else would go through exactly what my family had to endure. The natural pond was polluted, I was blamed, and almost went to jail if it wasn't for a few witnesses who came forward to clear my name at the last minute. But the land couldn't be kept, it was all sold off at a cheap price right after that."

“Do you know who is behind the land acquisition?” Hai Yen asked, carefully recording every detail.

"At that time, I didn't know, I only knew that the company that bought the land had a different name, but through Khang's article, I realized that the same group of people might be behind it," Mr. Tu Hanh replied. "I still keep some old papers, the land transfer contract. If you need me, I can send them over."

The conversation lasted nearly two hours, with Mr. Tu Hanh recounting in detail everything his family had gone through, the terrifying similarities to Hai Yen's own story causing her to pause several times, trying to suppress her rising emotions. This is no longer an isolated incident — it is living evidence of a systematic pattern of crime, repeated in many places, with the same scenario, just with different names and locations.

After the call, Hai Yen sat silently for a long time, trying to sort out the overwhelming emotions in her heart. She immediately called lawyer Hoang and recounted the entire content of the conversation.

“This is an extremely important discovery,” lawyer Hoang said, her voice filled with professional excitement. “If we can prove that this is a deliberate, recurring pattern, not a coincidence, the legal nature of the case will change completely — from a single case of fraud to a systematic criminal organization, with a much harsher level of punishment.”

“What do we need to do next?” Hai Yen asked.

“I will contact a lawyer colleague in Quang Ngai who can assist Mr. Tu Hanh's family in formalizing their testimony,” said lawyer Hoang. “If we can link the two cases together in the same file, the weight of evidence will multiply.”

In the evening, when telling Kien about the call, Hai Yen could not hide her emotions. "I thought my journey was unique, my family's own pain. But now I realize, this is the common pain of so many other families, in other places, that I have never known."

“That's also why we have to keep going,” Kien said, taking her hand. “Not only for our family, but for all other families that have and may continue to suffer the same fate, if no one stands up to stop it. this crime pattern again.”

Hai Yen nodded, a new determination, greater than ever, gradually formed in her heart. This fight, now, is no longer just her fight, but has become part of a broader struggle, beyond the boundaries of a land, a family, to touch the fate of countless other coastal communities across the country.

A few days later, a package from Mr. Tu Hanh arrived, containing copies of old land transfer contracts, papers that had yellowed over time but still retained their legal value. Hai Yen and lawyer Hoang spent an afternoon comparing them with the documents about Rach Goc and Dam Cung that Kien had previously collected, looking for any commonalities in terms of legal structure, transfer method, or names of intermediary companies responsible for purchasing.

“Look,” said lawyer Hoang, pointing to a small line in Mr. Tu Hanh's contract. “The company that bought land in Quang Ngai seven years ago has the same business registration address as one of the satellite companies that appeared in the land records in Rach Goc that Mr. Kien collected. This cannot be a coincidence.”

Hai Yen looked at that address, a small apartment in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, clearly just a formal registered address, not the actual place of operation of any business. This is the type of shell company often used to hide the true identities of the people behind it, a common tactic in money laundering or large-scale financial fraud cases that she has read about in specialized documents.

“If we can follow this chain of shell companies, we may find evidence directly connecting Mr. Vinh to both cases,” lawyer Hoang commented, her voice filled with hope. “But this requires deeper financial investigative expertise than we can do on our own. I think it's time to ask the investigation agency to expand its scope and coordinate with tax authorities and banks to trace the money flow."

Hai Yen nodded and took note of this proposal to present to the lieutenant in the next meeting. She clearly feels that, with each passing day, the panorama of this criminal network appears clearer, more complex, but at the same time more fragile under the increasing weight of evidence being gathered from all over the country.

That night, before going to bed, Hai Yen called Mr. Tu Hanh again to thank him for sending the documents, and asked more about his family's current life after the events of the past. His voice lowered as he recounted that, even though seven years had passed, his family was still unable to fully recover, having to move to another land and start over with a completely unfamiliar profession.

“I don't expect to get back the land I lost,” he said, his voice filled with a resignation that had lingered for too long. “I just hope that my family's story, combined with your family's story, will help prevent similar things from happening to other families in the future.”

Those words of Mr. Tu Hanh were deeply engraved in Hai Yen's mind, becoming a new source of motivation, beyond the personal desire to exonerate his father. She realized, the journey she was pursuing now This has a much greater meaning: not only to reclaim justice for the past, but also to prevent a future full of similar tragedies that could continue to happen, in any other coastal lands across the country, if no one is courageous enough to stand up to expose and end the criminal model that has been operating silently for many years.

She wrote down Mr. Tu Hanh's promise in her notebook, adding to the list of names and stories that she had pledged not to let fall into oblivion, before turning off the lights, preparing for a new day with the workload still looming ahead.

Lying in the dark, she thought about the geographical distance between Nam Can and Quang Ngai, hundreds of kilometers separating two lands, two strange families, yet their fates intersected through an invisible thread woven by the same network of greedy interests. She wondered how many other families, in how many other lands along this S-shaped coastline, are or have suffered the same fate without ever having the opportunity to speak up, be heard, and connect with each other to reclaim justice together.

That thought both made her feel heavy at the true scale of what she was facing, and also gave her a new strength - the power of empathy, of an invisible community that is gradually forming between people who have never met but share the same pain, the same desire to recognize the truth, even though they have never known each other's existence until today, until an invisible thread called truth has connected them all together, throughout. from South to Central, regardless of geographical distance and time.