Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death in US$12.5b fraud case
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The news: Vietnamese property tycoon, Truong My Lan, has been sentenced to death after being found to have embezzled USD12.5 billion ($19.16 billion) and illegally controlling a Vietnamese bank for 10 years.
The numbers: Lan is also required to pay around 674 trillion dong ($41.42 billion) in compensation, which is over twice the amount she was convicted of having embezzled. At the time of her arrest in 2022, the amount Lan embezzled was equivalent to around 3% of Vietnam’s GDP.
The context: In the country’s largest ever fraud trial, the 67-year-old chair of real estate company Van Thinh Phat was found guilty of fraudulent activities which took place between 2012 and 2022.
Along with accomplices, Lan was found guilty of siphoning off USD12.5 billion from the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which, through the use of proxies, Lan effectively controlled. The state was forced to bail out SCB in in 2022, after Lan’s arrest led to a run on the bank’s deposits.
The court in Ho Chi Minh City said that the harshness of the penalty was due to the seriousness of the case and that there was no possibility that the money would be recovered.
Lan is eligible to appeal the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court verdict within 15 days. While the death penalty was awarded on the embezzlement charge, the court also sentenced her to 20 years in prison each on two other charges — violating banking regulations and offering bribes.
The death sentence is awarded for 22 offences in Vietnam, although its is rarely handed out for white collar crimes.
What they said: Speaking to Reuters, a relation of Lan said: “We will keep fighting to see what we can do.”
The source: Vietnam Net
