£35,000,000,000 fraud sees Vietnamese woman sentenced to death

Truong My Lan faced the court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam (Credits: EPA)

A real estate tycoon who rose to power from a street market vendor was sentenced to death after she was accused of defrauding $44,000,000,000 in Vietnam.

Billionaire Truong My Lan, 67, was sentenced to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City.

It is the country’s largest ever financial fraud case, AP reports citing state media.

Lan, chair of real estate company Van Thinh Phat (VTP), was accused of fraud amounting to $125,000,000,000 (£10bn) – nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.

The businesswoman in court today (Credits: AP)

Other defendants attend a trial for their involvement in a $12.5 billion fraud case (Credits: AP)

She illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022, allowing 2,500 loans that racked up multi-billion dollar losses for the bank.

The bank lost a staggering $27,000,000,000 (£22bn), state media VnExpress reports.

It is almost as much as UK spends yearly on defense.

Lan denied the charges.

The court asked her to compensate the bank $26,900,000 (£21.5m).

Lan’s mitigating circumstances in the case were it was her first-time offence and she participated in charity activities.

But despite these factors, the court attributed its harsh sentence to the seriousness of the case.

The court said she was in charge of an orchestrated and sophisticated criminal enterprise that had serious consequences with no possibility of the money being recovered, the Vietnamese outlet reports.

Her actions ‘not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organisations but also push SCB (Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank) into a state of special control; eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the party and state,’ VnExpress quoted the judgement saying.

Who is the businesswoman Truong My Lan?

Lan comes from a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, BBC News says.

Her career began as a market stall vendor peddling cosmetics with her mum.

She began investing in property and land during a push for reform by the Community Party known as Doi Moi in 1986, the outlet says.

Fast forward to the 1990s when she owned a large portfolio of prime real estate, including hotels and restaurants.

The 2011 merger of a beleaguered SCB bank involved two other lenders.

The banks have since become one of Vietnam’s largest commercial banks by assets.

In 2011, Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, enabling her to arrange the merger of three smaller banks into larger Saigon Commercial Bank, BBC News says.

Vietnamese law bans any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank.

But she may have owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, BBC reports citing prosecutors.

She used her power to appoint her own people as bank managers before ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to several shell companies she controlled, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said she ordered her driver to withdraw more than $4,000,000,000 (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank and hide it in her basement, the broadcaster reports.

The amount of cash, even in Vietnam’s largest denomination banknotes would weigh 4,000 lb – as much as an empty shipping container.

She allegedly showered officials with bribes to make sure her loans were not scrutinised.

One of people sentenced for accepting a bribe was the former central bank official Do Thi Nhan.

She was sentenced to life in prison on today for accepting $5,200,000 (£4.1m) in bribes.

Former chief inspector of State Bank of Vietnam Do Thi Nhan (Credits: AP)

Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption push in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022.

The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched even the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics.

Former president Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.

Reaction to Vietnam’s biggest-ever fraud

The scale of Lan’s trial has shocked the nation, with VTP among Vietnam’s richest real estate firms.

Its projects include luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centres.

Vietnam Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has been at the helm of the anti-corruption drive (Credits: AP)

Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, AP reports.

This dampens Vietnam’s economic outlook, making foreign investors jittery at a time when the country had been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to find an alternative for their supply chains in China, it says.

Vietnam’s property sector has been hit particularly hard.

An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023 and developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers.

Despite rent for shop houses (buildings serving as both a residence and a commercial business) falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city centre remain empty, according to state media Thanh Nien.

Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s leading politician, said in November that the anti-corruption fight would ‘continue for the long-term.’

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