Real estate mogul Truong My Lan was sentenced to death by a Vietnamese court on Thursday for her involvement in the largest financial fraud case in the nation’s history, totaling 304 trillion dong ($12.46 billion). This was reported by state media.
One striking outcome of a drive against corruption that the leader of the ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, has vowed for years to eradicate is her trial, which started on March 5 and ended earlier than expected.
Following a trial in the commercial center of Ho Chi Minh City, Lan, the chairperson of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of theft, bribery, and violations of banking regulations, according to official media.
Speaking under anonymity, a family member told Reuters, “We will keep fighting to see what we can do.” He had stated that Lan will file an appeal against the sentence prior to the verdict.
Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of Lan’s attorneys, told Reuters that Lan had entered a not-guilty plea to the charges of embezzlement and bribery.
He continued, “Of course she will appeal the verdict,” pointing out that she had received sentences of 20 years each for the two additional allegations of bribery and violating banking laws, in addition to the death penalty for the embezzlement charge.
Vietnam executes people for a variety of crimes, including economic ones in addition to violent ones. Human rights organizations claim that hundreds of prisoners have been put to death in recent years, mostly via lethal injection.
According to the Thanh Nien newspaper, 84 defendants in the case were given penalties that ranged from three years of probation to life in prison. Among them are Hong Kong millionaire Eric Chu, Lan’s spouse, who received a nine-year prison sentence, and her niece, who received a seventeen-year sentence.
From designer fragrances to elite banking
Lan informed judges during the trial that she began her career as a cosmetics vendor at Ho Chi Minh City’s central market, supporting her mother, according to official media.
According to official media, she then established her real estate firm Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the same year she got married.
Investigators said that she was found guilty of conspiring with her accomplices to embezzle more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through a number of proxies despite regulations that strictly prohibited big holdings in lenders.
Investigators alleged that between early 2018 and October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB due to a run on the bank’s deposits brought on by Lan’s arrest, she unlawfully arranged loans to shell firms, taking substantial amounts of money.
The state daily VnExpress quoted the jury as saying, “The defendant’s actions not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also put SCB under scrutiny, eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State.”
The bank, which is presently supported by the central bank, is going through a difficult restructuring in which officials are attempting to determine the legitimacy of hundreds of assets that served as security for bonds and loans that VTP issued. The value of the bonds alone is $1.2 billion.
While many of the assets are incomplete projects, some of them are upscale real estate.
She had been a major player in Vietnam’s financial scene before her downfall; she had helped save the financially distressed SCB more than ten years before she was implicated in the bank’s current crisis.
She was found guilty of giving $5.2 million to a top central bank inspector named Do Thi Nhan, who received a life sentence, in order to bribe officials to get them to turn a blind eye.
Following Vietnam’s “Blazing Furnace” bribery investigation, hundreds of prominent corporate leaders and top governmental officials were forced to resign or face legal action.
According to a recent poll conducted by the U.N. Development Program and other organizations, corruption is so pervasive in some regions that a large number of people claim they pay bribes just to receive medical care in public hospitals.
