[imagesource:economynext]

Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan has been sentenced to death over her role in a 304 trillion dong (R225 billion) financial fraud case – the country’s biggest on record.

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 that began on 5 March.

The trial ended earlier than planned and was the dramatic result of a campaign against corruption that the ruling Communist Party leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, has pledged for years to stamp out.

Lan had pleaded not guilty to the embezzlement and bribery charges, with her lawyer, Nguyen Huy Thiep, saying “Of course, she will appeal the verdict”.

On top of the death sentence for embezzlement, Lan was also sentenced to 20 years each for the other two charges of bribery and violations of banking regulations.

Vietnam imposes the death penalty mostly for violent offences but also for economic crimes, with human rights groups saying it has executed hundreds of convicts in recent years, mainly by lethal injection.

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 began as a cosmetics vendor at the central market in Ho Chi Minh City, assisting her mother, she told judges during the trial, according to official media. She later created her real estate company, Van Thinh Phat, in 1992, the same year she married.

She and her accomplices were found guilty of syphoning off more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies despite tough restrictions banning big 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.

“The defendant’s actions not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also put SCB under scrutiny, eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State,” state newspaper VnExpress cited the jury as saying.

If eroding the people’s trust justifies a death sentence, our Parliament would be an abattoir.

Before her fall from grace, she had played a key role in Vietnam’s financial world, getting involved in the previous rescue of troubled SCB more than a decade before she contributed to the bank’s new crisis. She was found guilty of having bribed officials to persuade the authorities to look away, including paying $5.2 million (R94 million) to a senior central bank inspector, Do Thi Nhan, who was sentenced to life in prison.

Vietnam’s graft crackdown, dubbed “Blazing Furnace”, has seen hundreds of senior state officials and high-profile business executives prosecuted or forced to step down.

Corruption is so widespread that in some provinces many people say they pay bribes just to obtain medical services in public hospitals, according to a recent survey by the U.N. Development Program and other organizations.

Corruption on this scale often has deadly consequences for a nation’s poorest people, so we might say in this case the punishment fits the crime.

[source:cnn]