The move was made as police is expanding investigation into the bribery case at the Consular Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when organizing flights to repatriate Vietnamese citizens stranded abroad due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To, aged 58, began his career as a diplomat in 1991 and was named Deputy Foreign Minister in 2019.

Earlier, police had arrested several officials of the ministry's Consular Department as they were accused of taking bribes, including head of the department Nguyen Thi Huong Lan, and deputy head Do Hoai Trung.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Viet Nam arranged about 800 repatriation flights to bring home 200,000 citizens from more than 60 countries and territories./.