Vietnamese property tycoon given death sentence in $12B fraud case

A court in Vietnam on Thursday ordered the death penalty for a real es‐ tate tycoon found guilty in a financial fraud case to‐ talling more than $12 bil‐ lion US.

Vietnamese state media called it the country's largestever case of financial fraud.

The conviction of Truong My Lan came amid a govern‐ ment anti-corruption crack‐ down by Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Lan started off selling cos‐ metics in a market stall with her mother in Ho Chi Minh City. When Vietnam liberal‐ ized its economy, she moved into property, buying hotels and restaurants.

Her company, Van Thinh Phat, eventually came to own some of the most valuable downtown properties in Ho Chi Minh City.

In 2011, she arranged the merger of Saigon Joint Com‐ mercial Bank, or SCB, with two other banks.

Shell companies According to government documents, she illegally con‐ trolled SCB between 2012 to 2022, and used thousands of shell companies in Vietnam and abroad to arrange loans to herself and her allies.

Lan also bribed officials to conceal her financial deal‐ ings. A former official with Vietnam's central bank offici‐ al was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday taking more than $5 million in bribes.

The verdict handed down Thursday requires Lan to pay back more than $27 billion.

A lawyer for Lan says they plan to appeal the court's de‐ cision.

Corruption crackdown More than 80 other peo‐ ple involved in the case were also convicted. They received sentences that range from life imprisonment to three years of probation. Lan's hus‐ band received a nine-year jail sentence, while her niece was handed a 17-year sen‐ tence.

"There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the Communist era," said David Brown, a retired U.S. State Department official, ac‐ cording to BBC. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

The anti-corruption crack‐ down has led to the resigna‐ tions of two Vietnamese presidents and two deputy prime ministers.