A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages.
A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade.
“The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City.
Photo: AFP
After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and breaches of banking law. Four were given life imprisonment, while the others received jail terms ranging between 20 years and three years suspended.
Lan’s husband, Hong Kong billionaire Eric Chu Nap Kee (朱立基), was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Lan embezzled US$12.5 billion, but prosecutors said the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to US$27 billion — a figure equivalent to 6 percent of the nation’s GDP last year.
The court ordered Lan, 67, to pay almost the entire damages sum in compensation.
The death sentence is an unusually severe punishment in such a case, although the country is a leading executioner globally, according to Amnesty International.
Lan and the others were arrested as part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years.
She 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,” she said.
Hundreds of people began to stage protests in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, a relatively rare occurrence in the one-party communist state, after Lan’s arrest in October 2022.
Police have identified about 42,000 victims of the scandal, which has shocked the Southeast Asian nation.
Lan was accused of setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned a 90 percent stake.
Police said the scam’s 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 her.
Authorities have also said 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-ever bribe recorded in Vietnam.
Do Thi Nhan, former head of the State Bank of Vietnam’s inspection team, was sentenced to life in prison for receiving bribes. She said during the trial that millions of US dollars was handed to her in Styrofoam boxes by the former chief executive of SCB.
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