Hanoi - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has ordered an inspection into the appointment of the new head of the country's tourism department after a newspaper reported that a tourism company had fired the official for taking bribes 18 years ago, the government said Thursday.

According to the Thanh Nien newspaper, Nguyen Quoc Ky was appointed as the director of the National Administration of Tourism in March after he had been fired from the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Co 18 years ago for "soliciting and accepting bribes."

Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Hoang Tuan Anh, who made the appointment, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Thursday that he had known about Ky's "wrongdoing" before naming him head of the tourism department.

In an interview with the Lao Dong newspaper on Tuesday, however, the minister was quoted as saying, "Ky has been constantly striving over the last 18 years to become an active Communist Party member and has built Viettravel Co from scratch to a company with annual revenues of hundreds of billions of dong [tens of millions of dollars] and 600 employees."

Tuan Anh called Ky "a man of action, a devoted and active person, suitable with today's development and integration."

One of Ky's first moves has been to request ideas for a new national tourism slogan to replace the current one, "Vietnam: The Hidden Charm."

The prime minister has requested the results of the inspection by the Home Affairs Ministry and the Tourism Ministry into Ky's appointment by May 15.

"The fact that Nguyen Quoc Ky was appointed as the director of the tourism department is a normal practice and doesn't violate the law," said lawyer Pham Hong Hai, head of the Hanoi Bar Association.

"He didn't face a court but was merely subject to an administrative punishment, so he should be clean three years after that," Hai said.

Vietnam, an increasingly popular tourist destination, attracted more than 4.2 million international visitors in 2007, up 18 per cent over the previous year. (dpa)