Sand Battery Court Hearing Timeline and Claims Update (SAND - Part 15)
The next court date is set for 31.07.2025, at 2pm VNT.
Tech In Asia published a story covering a part of the saga today (I won't spoil the article for you) . The most important date mentioned in the article is the coming court date, in just less than a week's time.
Let's explore what's new since my last discoveries.
The manufactured pretext in the Labour Regulation dossier
After failing to appear in court on 15th April 2025, the Alterno team submitted a written letter to the Vietnamese court with their supporting evidence on 15th May 2025 — a full month later. Among the supporting documents is an updated Labour Regulation signed on 1st August 2024, in which the management team subtly changed the definition of "remote work" and the communication protocols via Slack. This seemingly innocuous change would later be weaponized against me, becoming the pretext for my eventual termination.
The 'old' Labour Regulation
On 7th June 2024, I signed a copy of Labour Regulation document, as legal representative of Alterno Vietnam JSC then, ready to be submitted as part of a typical Labour Union process. This document was drafted by Ms Tuyen, adapted from a standard template; the terms were, if anything, on the relaxed side. (The kind of team culture I build doesn't involve exact time tracking — across my past 15 or so startups, that has been the norm.)
This copy of the Labour Regulation never made it to its destination, of course. Later I found out that nothing had been submitted at all — a fact that puzzled me and my legal team for months.
The 'hidden' revised Labour Regulation
Consider the timing. I had my wedding on 22nd July, then drove back from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City — two days on the road — and was still physically at the labs in D9 signing paperwork on 26th July 2024.
And then a few days after, on 1st August 2024, Hai Ho signed a revised Labour Regulation (above), which legally he is able to do so, and probably also submitted to a different government body.
Why hidden?
On 8th August 2024, I was at the labs in D9 for the AGM meeting. In this meeting the updated Labour Regulation was not discussed. ( Yes, technically not in the scope of Singapore Board).
I was not notified of these new details in any interaction with Hai Ho, Nam Nguyen, or Kim Tuyen — nor by any of the investors — throughout August and September. If this requirement was critical enough to terminate a co-founder over, why did nobody mention it?
After all, that was exactly the purpose of the whole foul play, keeping me in the dark, and using manufactured evidence.
Why legal team could not find it?
The version I signed was supposed to be submitted to "Sở Lao động Thương binh và Xã hội" but the updated one was submitted to "Phòng Nội Vụ", a different government body and offices. Hence, when we were looking for it, we were looking at the wrong place. Vietnam legal system is complicated for sure.
On top of that the restructuring of VN administrative territory does not help, it basically froze the entire legal admin for months. Getting any kind of answer was and is still very slow.
The Termination Excuses
The situation escalated rapidly. On September 10, 2024, I received an official notice from Alterno Vietnam, claiming the company had been unable to contact me since 1st August, 2024. Now we know why that specific date.
Just a week later, on September 17, 2024, Alterno issued a termination decision, effective immediately. The reasons? Alleged prolonged unavailability and lack of communication via Slack, supposedly violating labour regulations. They claimed I 'left work for 5 consecutive working days or more without a legitimate reason' .
Maybe they should have contacted the investors and ask if I was still alive ;)
What was Nam Nguyen thinking?
The above paragraphs are the entirety of Nam's perspective from 9th July to 1st August 2024 submitted to the court. It says that the company has repeatedly invited me to the office to sign the new paperwork but could not contact me in anyway. Ignoring my personal matters surrounding 22nd July completely.
Well, I began my road trip from Saigon on 13/07/2024 and was physically back in the lab to sign paperwork on 26/07/2024. Notably, on this date, nothing was mentioned about the new Labour Regulation and the must to receive communication via Slack.
That means despite knowing I was on the road, and knowing I was preparing for my wedding, the team continued to make these implausible claims. Naturally, I had not invited the Alterno team to the wedding. Perhaps some of them took that personally — in my opinion, that was the seed of the resentment that followed.
Tham . Sân . Si
My thoughts
Throughout my career building software teams, mostly hybrid and remote, it usually involved unlimited holidays, no fixed working hours, free lunch, no micro-management among other things... People have come to know the SSS way, and my relaxed working style. The entire 500+ SSS mafia and many others can testify to this.
The twist in this saga is that the only person who has not worked with me day-to-day frequently, and is supposed to be the most technically adept of the team, yet is also the one that hold the most negative views against me, is CTO Nam Nguyen . He accused me of not contributing a single line of code to the Sand Battery. Well, seems like he was greatly misinformed about my skillsets, ... this opinion of Nam's only reinforces my point. In fact, Nam Nguyen was not strong in software development, and I thought that was okay — I could cover software and a lot more...
The pandemic left many of us leaders/managers with critical lessons on what not to do in remote team management. I thought it was even clearer in IoT/Hardware Development industry where tacit knowledge could sometimes only be passed by hands-on trainings. I don't think Nam had the mindset or the experience to make an accurate judgement, given what has happened.
Would you trust the person to be able to advance R&D rapidly this way? Could you expect someone working remotely for 2 years to understand the subtle conflicts between people, and their needs in daily working culture?
I didn't.
That led to my 'attempt' to scope my work as CSO, for the betterment of the team.
Several failed mediations, delayed court appearance
We sought mediation, which failed, and the Vietnamese court officially accepted my wrongful termination case on March 20, 2025 and set the court date. (The Alterno team refused to sign at the first mediation session despite attending.)
The court date of 15th April 2025 was known well in advance. The Alterno team nonetheless waited until 10th April 2025 to submit a letter asking to delay the proceedings — proposing no alternative dates — and then failed to appear at the first court date on 15th April 2025 without valid reasons, as detailed in Part 11. (This last-minute stonewalling is consistent with what I observed during my time working with the management team.)
On 15th May 2025, Alterno submitted their follow-up written explanations; my legal team only got hold of a copy on 24th July 2025.
The reason for the long delay in obtaining these documents is that the entire Vietnamese administrative territory was being restructured, which brought the court system to a standstill for months. We simply could not get copies from the judges quickly enough.
Moreover, my legal team and myself repeatedly tried to contact Alterno HR and Finance department to settle my previous HR & Tax matters; and requesting for further documentation. We were not able to contact anyone since January 2025 until now. My attorney's email and text were unanswered. My emails were blocked by [email protected], hai@, nam@, phong@, trinh@, hung@, (except that [email protected] went through, weird!) .
The investors (must have) knew
These events began even earlier than my previous timeline revealed. I believe the orchestration of my removal started on 10th July 2024 — and the pattern that followed raises serious questions about how much Antler Vietnam knew, and when.
The signs are hard to ignore: from that day onward there were no questions from Antler, no emails, no letter of concern, no text, no phone call, no effort to reach out — nothing until 12 September 2024, when I proactively scheduled a meeting. Even then, the Antler Vietnam team said they didn't know much. Antler has continued promoting Alterno even until recently.
What made it more worrying still was the complete silence from the investors who were witnessing the events unfold and chose to remain passive observers rather than intervene. These include all of the venture capitalists: Touchstone, Antler Vietnam, Impact Square, Glocalinks, UntroD, ADB Ventures, Schneider Electric....
Touchstone was present on 8th August 2024. Touchstone and Antler kept quiet about what happened on 1st August 2024, whether they knew it then or later, lead to a big unanswered question:
What are the investors roles in this saga? Should they be held accountable too? The support comes with funding is questionable or rather lackluster.
The court date is set
Despite knowing these matters would be taken to court, Hai Ho and Nam Nguyen continue to act in concert — with board members and VCs standing silently by — so only one option remains:
See you all in court!
31.07 happens to be my birthday as well 🙃
To be continued in Part 16 – The Injustice continue, hence the Fight...