The death sentence handed to a real estate tycoon in a $12.5 billion financial fraud case is the latest punishment meted out by Vietnam in the Southeast Asian country’s sweeping “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign.
Thursday’s ruling against Truong My Lan, the former chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, follows the resignation of two presidents in just over a year, in departures linked to separate allegations of wrongdoing.
The sheer scale of Lan’s misconduct has rattled the public in a country that has long projected an image of authoritarian stability, analysts say — and raised alarm among foreign investors, a key driver of Vietnam’s booming economy.
Her trial, which began last month, has played out publicly in state media, a change of tack in a country where information is usually tightly controlled. Lan, who is in her late 60s, was found guilty of bribery, violating bank regulations and embezzlement, and sentenced to death, though her family has indicated she will appeal.
Investigators said she and her accomplices siphoned off more than 304 trillion dong ($12.5 billion) from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders, Reuters reported.
Lan’s actions resulted in damages of 677 trillion Vietnamese dong ($27 billion) to SCB, one of the largest privately owned commercial banks in the country, according to state-owned VN Express International.
She “was the mastermind in the long-term scheme and committed elaborate and organized crimes, causing irrevocable consequences,” it quoted judges of the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City as saying.
The scale of the fraud was said to be equivalent to roughly 3% of Vietnam’s economy. By comparison, Malaysia’s long-running 1MDB state fund scandal that began in 2009, described as one of the world’s biggest financial crimes, involved the looting of about $4.5 billion.
According to Reuters, state media reported that 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 Hong Kong businessman who was sentenced to nine years in jail, and her niece who received 17 years.
High-profile resignations
Over the past year, staggering levels of embezzlement and fraud have been revealed by Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party (CPV) as part of its ongoing anti-corruption campaign, which began in 2016 and has resulted in the investigation of hundreds of party members.
Last month one of its top leaders was forced to resign. At a meeting on March 20, the CPV accepted the resignation of President Vo Van Thuong, for “violations that left a bad mark on the reputation of the Communist Party,” a phrase generally understood by analysts to allude to links with corruption.
Though widely considered ceremonial, the presidency is one of the top three positions in Vietnam’s political hierarchy after the CPV’s Secretary General, currently Nguyen Phu Trong.
Stepping down after only about a year in office, party veteran Thuong, who once pledged to “resolutely continue” the fight against corruption, became the fourth member of the 18-person Politburo to resign in recent years.