Police raided the headquarters of F88, a Vietnamese lender based in Ho Chi Minh City, local outlet VnExpress reported. The financial firm was under investigation for the alleged extortion of users in its debt collection activities.
F88 reportedly has “hundreds of employees” acting as debt collectors.
According to VnExpress, police in Thanh Hoa Province also said last month that the F88 branches had committed violations such as keeping incomplete records, mishandling data, and not keeping the collateral at business premises for the required amount of time.
While F88’s pawning and loaning interests fall within thresholds allowed by the State Bank of Vietnam, the lender also asks customers to pay fees upon completing procedures. These rates can reach up to 5% a month, the report cited Thanh Hoa police as saying.
Tech in Asia has reached out to F88 for comments.
F88 offers a range of financial services, including insurance, money transfer, and small loans backed by vehicles as collateral. It has more than 800 stores and points of sales across the country and plans to ramp up that number to 1,700 by 2025.
F88 announced last week that it had raised US$50 million in series C funding to gear up for a domestic IPO in 2024.
Editing by Thu Huong Le and Arpit Nayak
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