Contract Law · 23.03.2026

Theft Charges in Vietnam: Article 173 of the Penal Code and Your Defence

Lawyer UnilawReading time: 8 min

If you are searching for a “petty theft lawyer”, you are using a category that exists in common-law systems but not in Vietnam. Vietnamese criminal law does not split theft into a misdemeanour and a felony. There is one offence — trộm cắp tài sản, Article 173 of the Penal Code — and the value of the property decides which penalty bracket applies. This page sets out how Article 173 actually works, what the case file has to establish, and what a defence lawyer in Vietnam can do at each stage.

1. One theft offence, four penalty brackets

Article 173 of the Penal Code (Penal Code No. 100/2015/QH13, as amended) describes a single act: taking another person’s property. What changes is the bracket:

Clause 1 — property worth from VND 2,000,000 to under VND 50,000,000: non-custodial reform of up to 3 years, or imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years.
Clause 2 — imprisonment from 2 to 7 years, including where the value is from VND 50,000,000 to under VND 200,000,000.
Clause 3 — imprisonment from 7 to 15 years, including value from VND 200,000,000 to under VND 500,000,000.
Clause 4 — imprisonment from 12 to 20 years where the value is VND 500,000,000 or more.

Clause 5 adds an optional fine of VND 5,000,000 to VND 50,000,000. Because the brackets are defined by value, the valuation of the property is often the single most important contested issue in a Vietnamese theft file — a difference of a few million dong can move a case from clause 1 into clause 2, and from a non-custodial sentence into a minimum of two years.

2. Below VND 2,000,000: still a criminal case in five situations

Article 173 clause 1 also applies where the value is under VND 2,000,000, but only in five listed situations:

the person has already been administratively sanctioned for appropriating property and offends again;
the person has a prior conviction for this offence or for one of the offences in Articles 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175 or 290, not yet expunged, and offends again;
the act adversely affects security, order and social safety;
the property is the victim’s or their family’s main means of livelihood;
the property is a relic or an antique.

The reference to a prior administrative sanction is itself informative: it shows that low-value appropriation outside these five situations is dealt with outside the Penal Code. A defence that keeps a case out of Article 173 is therefore often built on value and on the absence of these five circumstances, not on intent alone.

3. Aggravating circumstances that are not about value

Clause 2 of Article 173 is not only a value bracket. It also covers theft committed in an organised manner, theft of a professional character, use of cunning or dangerous methods, assault in order to escape, theft of a national treasure, and dangerous recidivism. Clause 3 adds taking advantage of a natural disaster or epidemic; clause 4 adds taking advantage of a state of war or emergency. These are legal characterisations, not facts that speak for themselves — whether two people acting together amounts to “organised” theft, or whether pushing past a guard amounts to “assault in order to escape”, is exactly the kind of point a defender contests before the charge is finalised.

4. Age: theft is one of the offences that reaches 14-year-olds

Under Article 12 of the Penal Code, a person aged 16 or over bears criminal responsibility for every offence. A person from 14 to under 16 bears criminal responsibility only for very serious and especially serious offences in a closed list of articles — and Article 173 is on that list. So a 15-year-old cannot be prosecuted for clause 1 theft, but can be for the higher brackets. Where the accused is under 18, the Law on Juvenile Justice No. 59/2024/QH15, in force from 1 January 2026, governs the procedure and the available outcomes.

5. Your rights from the moment you are held

The Criminal Procedure Code No. 101/2015/QH13 gives a person who is held, arrested, charged or brought to trial a defined set of rights. Article 58 (person held in an urgent case or arrested), Article 60 (the accused) and Article 61 (the defendant) all include the right to be told the reason, to have rights explained, to give or withhold a statement, and expressly not to be compelled to give a statement against oneself or to admit guilt. Article 13 states the presumption of innocence: where the grounds for accusation cannot be established under the Code’s procedure, the competent authority must conclude that the person is not guilty.

Article 98 matters just as much in theft cases: an admission by the accused may be treated as evidence only if it is consistent with the other evidence in the file, and an admission may never be the sole basis for a conviction. Article 183 requires the investigator to notify the procurator and the defender of the time and place of interrogation, to explain the accused’s rights before the first interrogation and record that in the minutes, and not to interrogate at night save where it cannot be postponed and the reason is recorded.

6. When a defender can enter, and how

Under Article 74 of the Criminal Procedure Code, a defender takes part from the moment the accused is charged — and where the person is arrested or held in custody, from the moment they arrive at the investigating body’s premises or the custody decision is issued. Article 72 sets out who may act: a lawyer, a representative of the accused, a people’s defence counsel, or a legal-aid officer where the accused is eligible for legal aid. Article 73 lists what the defender may do — meet and question the accused, be present when statements are taken and during interrogation, attend confrontation and identification, and read the procedural minutes concerning their own participation. Article 78 requires every defender to register in all cases and sets out the documents to be produced.

Article 76 makes appointment mandatory in two situations where no defender has been retained: where the charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, life imprisonment or death; and where the accused has a physical defect preventing self-defence, a mental defect, or is under 18. For a theft file, that threshold is reached at clause 4.

7. Mitigation, suspended sentence and the criminal record

Article 51 of the Penal Code lists the mitigating circumstances a court must consider. Several of them are directly reachable in a theft case and depend on what the accused does early: preventing or reducing the harm, voluntarily making good or compensating the damage, offending for the first time in a less serious case, or offending because of exceptional hardship not of one’s own making. Compensation is not an admission of every element of the charge, and treating it as a tactical step to be timed is part of the defence work.

Article 65 allows a suspended sentence where the imprisonment imposed does not exceed 3 years, with a probation period of 1 to 5 years — which is within reach for Article 173 clause 1 but not for the higher brackets. Article 69 provides that a person whose conviction is expunged is regarded as not having been convicted, and that a person convicted of a less serious or serious offence committed negligently, or granted exemption from penalty, is not regarded as having a criminal record at all.

8. If you are a foreign national accused of theft in Vietnam

Article 5 of the Penal Code applies the Code to every offence committed on Vietnamese territory, without distinction of nationality — so a foreign resident, worker or visitor accused of theft in Vietnam is dealt with under Article 173, not under the law of their home country. The only qualification in Article 5 is for persons entitled to diplomatic or consular immunity, whose criminal responsibility is resolved under the relevant treaty or international custom.

Article 29 of the Criminal Procedure Code provides that the language of criminal proceedings is Vietnamese, and that a participant may use their own language, in which case an interpreter must be provided. In practice this means every statement in the file exists in Vietnamese, and checking that the Vietnamese record matches what was actually said is part of the defence, not an afterthought.

9. Speak to UniLaw before the file is closed

The points that decide a Vietnamese theft case — the valuation, whether one of the five low-value situations applies, whether a clause 2 characterisation is justified, whether the admission in the file is supported by anything else — are all easier to address while the investigation is still open than after the indictment. If you or a family member has been stopped, held or charged with theft in Vietnam, contact UniLaw and we will tell you plainly which bracket the file is heading for and what can still be done about it.

Legal basis

Penal Code No. 100/2015/QH13 (as amended and consolidated): Article 5 (territorial application), Article 12 (age of criminal responsibility), Article 51 (mitigating circumstances), Article 65 (suspended sentence), Article 69 (expungement), Article 173 (theft of property).
Criminal Procedure Code No. 101/2015/QH13: Article 13 (presumption of innocence), Article 16 (guarantee of the right to defence), Article 29 (language of proceedings), Articles 58, 60, 61 (rights of the person held, the accused, the defendant), Articles 72, 73, 74, 78 (the defender), Article 76 (mandatory appointment of a defender), Article 98 (statements of the accused), Article 183 (interrogation).
Law on Juvenile Justice No. 59/2024/QH15 of 30 November 2024, in force from 1 January 2026, where the accused is under 18.

A theft allegation often arrives alongside other problems. See our wider legal services for foreigners in Vietnam.