Photo Credit: Reuters
A high-profile Vietnamese real estate tycoon was sentenced to death on Thursday in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated $27 billion in damages. Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty of embezzling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over the course of a decade in a case that has stunned the nation.
This is the most spectacular trial in the country's history, which befitted the greatest bank fraud the world has ever seen. My Lan is one of the very few women who were sentenced to death in Vietnam over a white-collar crime, a rare verdict.
According to the BBC, the ruling is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the crime. My Lan was convicted after being found guilty of taking out a loan of $44bn (£35bn) from the Saigon Commercial Bank. According to the verdict, she was meant to return a sum of $27bn, which the prosecutor had said might never be recovered. Some are of the view that the death penalty is the court's job to force her to return some of the mission billions.
Lan was found guilty on three counts: bribery, violating banking regulations and embezzlement. Between 2012 and 2022, she stole $12.5 billion from SCB, setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from the bank, in which she owned a 90 percent stake. She ordered SCB officers to transfer the money to shell companies and then moved the money around or withdrew as cash to cover her wrongdoing, court judges said, according to state media.
It was learnt that the evidence was in 104 boxes and weighed six tonnes. Truong My Lan, however, denied the charges and can appeal, but 85 others were tried along with her. In addition, the court found all the defendants guilty, but four of them received live imprisonment. Others were given between three and 20 years in jail. Her husband and niece received nine and 17 years in jail, respectively.
Lewis Musonye
