Vietnamese tycoon sentenced to death in $12.5 billion fraud case

A court in Vietnam handed the death sentence on Thursday to real estate tycoon Truong My Lan for her role in a 304-trillion-dong ($12.5-billion) financial fraud, the country's biggest on record, state media said.

Her trial, begun on March 5 and ending earlier than planned, was one dramatic result of a campaign against corruption that the leader of the ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, has pledged for years to stamp out.

Lan, the chairwoman of real estate 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 keep fighting to see what we can do," a family member told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Before the verdict, he had said Lan would appeal against the sentence.

Lan had pleaded not guilty to the embezzlement and bribery charges, Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of Lan's lawyers told Reuters.

"Of course, she will appeal the verdict," he added noting she was sentenced to death for the embezzlement charge and to 20 years each for the other two charges of bribery and violations of banking regulations.

The Thanh Nien newspaper said 84 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from probation for three years to life imprisonment.
 
Among them are Lan's husband, Eric Chu, a businessman from Hong Kong, who was sentenced to nine years in jail, and her niece who got 17 years.

Lan started as a cosmetics trader at the central market in Ho Chi Minh City, helping out her mother, she told judges during the trial, according to state media.

She later founded her real estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the same year when she got married, according to state media.

She was found guilty, with her accomplices of siphoning off more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders, according to investigators.

From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits triggered by Lan's arrest, she appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies, investigators said.

Reuters