HO CHI MINH CITY — Vietnam’s unprecedented campaign against corruption has cast a pall over the country’s startup scene, investors say, indicating gloom has spread beyond the property and banking industries most affected by recent criminal sentences linked to graft.
Venture capitalists expressed concern about the crackdown’s impact on macroeconomic sentiment, adding to a funding winter already being felt across Southeast Asia’s technology industry. In the past two years the clampdown has included the dismissals of two presidents and a top lawmaker as well as stock exchange and regulatory officials in Vietnam, usually a stable one-party state.
