Vietnam's state-owned gold monopoly Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) is sitting on 170,876 colored stones, gemstones, and semi-precious stones tracked entirely off its balance sheet, with a total recorded value of just over VND 1 billion — averaging roughly VND 6,000, or about USD 0.24, per stone. The figures come from the company's audited 2025 financial statements, published this week, and have drawn sharp attention given that an active criminal investigation into diamond smuggling at the firm is already under way.
Off-Balance-Sheet, But Not Off the Radar
SJC records these stones as memorandum items — assets tracked for internal management purposes that do not appear on the formal balance sheet and therefore do not feed into reported net assets. That accounting treatment is technically permissible, but it means the VND 6,000 average book price says nothing about what these stones are worth commercially. For context, even low-grade commercial diamonds typically trade for hundreds of dollars per carat; a book value of roughly a quarter-dollar per stone is a placeholder figure, not a market appraisal.
The gap between administrative book value and real-world pricing is exactly what investigators appear to be examining. According to early findings cited in the disclosure, a number of SJC executives and staff allegedly arranged purchases of smuggled diamonds from Hong Kong between 2022 and 2024, then moved the stones illegally into Vietnam for sale through the company's retail network. Investigators are said to be widening the probe.
Revenue Collapses, But Profit Holds
The headline financials tell a separate story. SJC's net revenue fell approximately 56% in 2025 to VND 14,030 billion, down from more than VND 32,190 billion the prior year. The drop reflects the significant cooling of Vietnam's gold market after the government tightened controls on SJC-brand gold bars during 2023–2024, which had previously driven enormous transaction volumes.
Despite the revenue collapse, gross profit actually rose to VND 741.7 billion, as the cost of goods sold fell even faster than sales. After-tax profit reached VND 425.5 billion, up nearly 10% year on year. The improvement in margins suggests SJC shifted its revenue mix toward higher-value, lower-volume transactions rather than bulk gold-bar trading.
Balance Sheet Snapshot
Total assets stood at roughly VND 2,285 billion at year-end 2025. Inventory dominated, at just over VND 1,100 billion — nearly half of total assets — while cash and equivalents reached VND 448 billion. The inventory-heavy balance sheet is structurally typical for a precious-metals retailer, but it also means asset quality depends heavily on how those holdings are valued and verified.
SJC is a 100% state-owned enterprise under Ho Chi Minh City's People's Committee, with charter capital exceeding VND 1,358 billion. It operates 11 provincial branches, 14 jewelry retail outlets concentrated in Ho Chi Minh City, and one manufacturing facility — the SJC Tan Thuan Jewelry Enterprise — giving it one of the broadest physical retail footprints in Vietnam's formal gold and jewelry market.
What the Probe Means for Governance
The smuggling allegations, if substantiated, would represent a significant governance failure inside a strategically sensitive state enterprise. SJC manages the SJC gold-bar brand, which functions as Vietnam's de facto benchmark for physical gold pricing and is the only bar format the State Bank of Vietnam officially recognizes for domestic trade. Any reputational damage to the brand has potential knock-on effects for gold-market confidence more broadly.
The off-balance-sheet gem inventory, whatever its true market value, will likely come under closer scrutiny now that auditors have surfaced the figure publicly. Regulators and investigators will want to reconcile the 170,876 stones tracked internally against import records, sales logs, and the sourcing allegations at the center of the criminal case. How SJC and its state-owner respond to those questions will be a test of whether Vietnam's ongoing push for greater transparency at state-owned enterprises translates into practice at one of its most prominent ones.
