HANOI - WHEN Vietnamese grandmother Le Hien Duc gets flowers, they are often funeral wreaths dropped outside her Hanoi home as death threats for her dogged battle against corruption.

In a country where graft and bribery are unsavoury facts of everyday life, the 75-year-old has made a lot of enemies, but also emerged as a people's hero for her fearless campaign against officials on the take.

Since she retired as a primary school teacher in 1984, she has spent her days writing thousands of letters and e-mail, worked the phones and hunted down government officials in their offices and even their homes.

This week, the one-time army officer with a chestful of medals won another award for her bravery when corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) chose her as a joint winner of its 2007 Integrity Award.

'Her respect for authority ends where corruption begins,' the Berlin-based non-profit group said about Madam Duc, the first Vietnamese to win the annual prize, which she shares with Swiss criminology Professor Mark Pieth.

'Whether it is allegations of graft in the school system or bribing by police on the road, Ms Duc does not back off until the concerns of those afflicted by corruption are dealt with in a fair manner.'

Working from her Hanoi home, the sprightly grandmother of eight - a 150cm tall lady weighing 40 kilogrammes - is busy from morning till night working through stacks of citizens' complaints.

She has taken on school officials who have short-changed children on their lunch meals, a water company that charged residents for renovations it never delivered, and once called a minister 30 times to pursue a complaint.

When she witnessed a Hanoi traffic cop squeeze a motorcycle driver for a bribe, she hounded him with a digital camera, recorded his badge number and launched a complaint with the police chief that got the officer demoted.

'Many police now carry my photo in their wallets so they can recognise me on the street,' she says cheerfully.

Mdm Duc has four children and eight grandchildren, but she says she won't let them visit her house - a gated war room outfitted with phones and a computer donated by an IT company - because it is too dangerous.

'People have told me not to spend my money on phone calls and to start saving for a coffin instead,' she said. 'Others have told me I will get run over on the road.'

Vietnam ranks 123rd out of 179 nations in TI's annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a survey of business people and country experts that lists Denmark as the least corrupt and Somalia as the worst.

Graft scandals have rocked the communist government - one scam involving transport officials betting millions on European football, another concerning kickbacks and missing funds in a still unrealised e-government project.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has vowed to stamp out corruption, which donor countries and business groups again highlighted as a major concern at a series of annual conferences last week.

'This generation needs to be aware of the impact of corruption on national development in general and on each individual's life in particular,' said Swedish ambassador Rolf Bergman.

'Not tolerating corruption in any form and saying no to corruption at an individual level must be encouraged and rewarded.'

Mdm Duc is confident Vietnam is on the right track.

'During the war against the French, I fought against injustice,' said the one-time army decoder who worked in the jungle for revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

'Now that I'm retired, I have more time to fight injustice.'

'Vietnam has won every war it has fought in the past. There is no reason it cannot win the war against corruption.'