A Property Tycoon of Vietnam name Truong My Lan has sentenced to death on Thursday, 11 April 2024. She has sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption case in Vietnam with an $12.5 billion dollar.
Property Tycoon Truong My Lan is a chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat. She found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB). A panel consisting of three hand-picked jurors and two judges unanimously rejected all defense arguments presented by Truong My Lan. This case is the one of the biggest fraud case of the country.
85 others with Lan faced verdicts and sentencing on various charges including bribery, abuse of power, appropriation, and violations of banking law. The list of the accused includes former central bankers, e-government officials and previous SCB executives.
Lan found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion. However, prosecutors revealed on Thursday that the total damages now reach $27 billion, constituting approximately 6% of the country’s GDP in 2023. Police have identified approximately 42,000 victims affected by the scandal.
In this type of case the death sentence is rare.
Lan and others arrested in a big corruption crackdown in Vietnam. Many officials and business leaders have caught in this crackdown in recent years.
Before the court’s final decision last week, Lan seemed to mention that she had considered suicide. According to state media she said, “In my desperation, I thought of death,” she said, according to state media.
She also added, “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.”
In the 2022 Vietnam Property Tycoon Truong My Lan arrested
In the year of 2022 after she arrested, hundreds of people protested in the capital, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City. This is uncommon in Vietnam, where the ruling party is communist and protests are not common.
A heavy police was seen present outside the State Bank of Vietnam in Hanoi on the location where the protest took place.
Lan, who married to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman currently on trial, stands accused of orchestrating fraudulent loan applications to siphon money from SCB, of which she held a 90% stake.
Police stated that the victims of the scheme were all SCB bondholders who were unable to access their funds and had not received any interest or principal payments since Lan’s arrest.
During the trial, prosecutors disclosed that they had seized over 1,000 properties owned by Lan.
Authorities revealed that $5.2 million, allegedly provided by Lan and certain SCB bankers to government officials to conceal the bank’s infractions and financial instability, constituted the largest bribe ever recorded in Vietnam.
Do Thi Nhan, the former head of the State Bank of Vietnam’s inspection team, who offered the bribe, testified during the trial that the cash handed to her in Styrofoam boxes by SCB’s former chief executive, Vo Tan Van. Upon realizing the contents, Nhan refused the boxes, but Van declined to retrieve them, according to state media reports.
Since 2021, over 4,400 individuals have charged in Vietnam’s corruption crackdown, involving more than 1,700 cases.
