(Reuters) – A Vietnam court on Thursday sentenced real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death for her role in a 304 trillion dong ($12.46 billion) financial fraud case, the largest recorded in the country, state media reported.
His trial, which began on March 5 and ended earlier than planned, was the dramatic result of an anti-corruption campaign led by the leader of the ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong.
Lan, chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules at the end of a trial in the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, state media said.
“We will continue to fight to see what we can do,” a family member told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Before the verdict he said Lan would appeal the sentence.
Lan has pleaded not guilty to charges of embezzlement and bribery, Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of his lawyers, told Reuters.
“Of course she will appeal the verdict,” he added, noting that she was sentenced to death on the embezzlement charge and 20 years each on the other two charges of bribery and violations of banking regulations.
Vietnam imposes the death penalty primarily for violent crimes, but also for economic crimes. Human rights groups say it has executed hundreds of convicts in recent years, mostly by lethal injection.
Thanh Nien newspaper reported that 84 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from three years’ probation to life in prison. They included Lan’s husband, Eric Chu, a Hong Kong businessman, who was sentenced to nine years in prison, and her niece, who was sentenced to 17 years.
Lan started out as a cosmetics merchant in Ho Chi Minh City’s central market, helping his mother, he told judges during the trial and state media reported.
He later founded his real estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the same year he got married, according to state media.
She was found guilty, along with her accomplices, of siphoning more than 304 trillion dong from the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of representatives despite rules strictly limiting large stakes in lenders, according to the researchers.
From early 2018 until October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits sparked by Lan’s arrest, she appropriated large sums of money through illegal loans to shell companies, investigators said.
“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 the State,” state newspaper VnExpress quoted to the jury.
The bank is currently backed by the central bank and faces a complex restructuring under which authorities are trying to establish the legal status of hundreds of assets that were used as collateral for loans and bonds issued by VTP. The bonds alone are worth US$1.2 billion.
Some of the assets are high-end properties but many others are unfinished projects.
Before his fall from grace, he played a key role in Vietnam’s financial world, becoming involved in the previous bailout of SCB, more than a decade before contributing to the bank’s new crisis.
She was convicted of bribing officials to persuade authorities to look the other way, including paying $5.2 million to a senior central bank inspector, Do Thi Nhan, who was sentenced to life in prison. .
Vietnam’s corruption crackdown, dubbed the “Burning Furnace,” has left hundreds of top state officials and high-profile business executives prosecuted or forced to resign.
Corruption is so widespread that in some provinces many people say they pay bribes just to obtain medical services at public hospitals, according to a recent survey by the United Nations Development Program and other organizations.
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