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…
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