A Vietnamese property tycoon was sentenced to death on Thursday (Apr 11) over her role in a 304 trillion dong (US$12.46 billion) financial fraud case, the country’s biggest on record.
Truong My Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery, and violations of banking rules at the end of a trial in Ho Chi Minh City.
A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all her defence arguments.
“The defendant’s actions … eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the (Communist) Party and state,” read the verdict.
After a five-week trial, 85 others also face verdicts and sentencing on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and violations of banking law.
Lan denied the charges and blamed her subordinates.
She and her accomplices were accused of siphoning off more than US$12.5 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies, according to investigators.
From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits, Lan appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies, investigators said.
Prosecutors said on Thursday that the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to US$27 billion – a figure equivalent to 6 per cent of the country’s 2023 GDP. The death sentence is an unusually severe punishment in such a case.
The arrests came as part of a national corruption crackdown under Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years.
Lan appeared to say in final remarks to the court last week that she had thoughts of suicide.
“In my desperation, I thought of death,” she said, according to state media.
“I am so angry that I was stupid enough to get involved in this very fierce business environment – the banking sector – which I have little knowledge of.”
A family member told Reuters before the verdict was issued that Lan would appeal the sentence. Her lawyers were not immediately available for comment.
PROTESTS
After Lan’s arrest in October 2022, hundreds of people began to stage protests in the capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, a relatively rare occurrence in the one-party communist state.
Police have identified around 42,000 victims of the scandal, which has shocked the Southeast Asian country.
Lan, who is married to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman also on trial, was accused of setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned a 90 percent stake.
Police say the scam victims are all SCB bondholders who cannot withdraw their money and have not received interest or principal payments since Lan’s arrest.
Prosecutors said during the trial they had seized more than 1,000 properties belonging to Lan. Authorities have also said the US$5.2 million allegedly given by Lan and some SCB bankers to state officials to conceal the bank’s violations and poor financial situation was the largest bribe ever recorded in Vietnam.
The woman who was offered the bribe – Do Thi Nhan, the former head of the State Bank of Vietnam’s inspection team – said during the trial that the cash was handed to her in styrofoam boxes by the former CEO of SCB, Vo Tan Van.
After realizing they contained money, Nhan refused the boxes but Van declined to take them back, state media reported.
More than 4,400 people have been indicted during Vietnam’s corruption crackdown, across more than 1,700 graft cases, since 2021. A top Vietnamese luxury property tycoon – Do Anh Dung, head of the Tan Hoang Minh group – was sentenced to eight years in prison last month after he was found guilty of cheating thousands of investors in a US$355 million bond scam.
At one point in 2022, Vietnamese stocks suffered a US$40 billion wipeout following a series of big corporate arrests, rattling investor confidence at a delicate moment for the fast-growing economy.
