HANOI, Feb 23 (AFP) - A poverty-stricken 97-year-old man in Vietnam won up to 400,000 dollars in a lottery, a report said Tuesday, sparking a frenzy among relatives eager to get a piece of his new-found wealth.

A neighbour in southern Ho Chi Minh City and local officials had to step in to stop the elderly man from giving away the windfall to people who had swarmed to his home, Thanh Nien newspaper said.

What was left of the money has gone into a bank account, the newspaper reported.

Nguyen Van Het bagged the prize after spending 100,000 dong (just over five dollars) on lottery tickets from "lucky money" he received ahead of the Lunar New Year, Thanh Nien said.

Small packets of "lucky money" are a traditional Tet gift.

Thanh Nien reported Het's winnings at 7.6 billion dong, or 400,000 dollars, a massive sum in a country where the annual per capita income is about 1,000 dollars.

"We only know he won billions of dong," an official from the Fatherland Front, which implements government social programmes, told AFP.

The official, who declined to be named, said local authorities had to intervene and restore order around the man's home because so many relatives or people claiming to be relatives had turned up asking for money.

Het and his sick wife had been receiving special financial support from authorities because they lived below the poverty line, the Fatherland Front official said.

"We will wait for a few more weeks so that he can calm down before asking him what he wants to do with the money," he said.