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.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they