HANOI - A top Vietnamese property tycoon was sentenced to death on April 11 in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion (S$36.5 billion) in damages.
A panel of three handpicked jurors and two judges rejected all defence arguments by Truong My Lan, 67, chairwoman 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 southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City.
After a five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and violations 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, was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Lan embezzled US$12.5 billion, but prosecutors said on April 11 that the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to US$27 billion – a figure equivalent to 6 per cent of the country’s 2023 gross domestic product. The court ordered Lan 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.
In final remarks to the court earlier in April, Lan appeared to say 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.”
Hundreds of people staged protests in the capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, a relatively rare occurrence in the one-party communist state, after Lan’s arrest in October 2022. The police have identified around 42,000 victims of the scandal, which has shocked the South-east Asian country.
Among them is Nga, a 67-year-old Hanoi resident who told AFP on April 11 that she had hoped for a life sentence for Lan so she could live to fully witness the pain her actions had caused ordinary people.
“Many people worked hard to deposit money into the bank, but now she’s received the death sentence and that’s it for her,” said Nga, using a pseudonym to protect her identity. “She can’t see the suffering of the people.”
Nga has so far been unable to retrieve the US$120,000 she invested with SCB.
Lan was accused of setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned a 90 per cent stake.
The police say 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 that they had seized more than 1,000 properties belonging to Lan.
The authorities have also said that the 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, the 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 the cash was handed to her in styrofoam boxes by the former chief executive of SCB.
More than 4,400 people have been indicted in Vietnam’s corruption crackdown, across more than 1,700 graft cases, since 2021.
A top Vietnamese luxury property tycoon – Do Anh Dung, head of the Tan Hoang Minh group – was sentenced to eight years in prison in March after he was found guilty of cheating thousands of investors in a US$355 million bond scam. AFP
