You can now listen to Antigua News articles!
Truong My Lan
by Mick the Ram
The high-profile Vietnamese property tycoon and billionaire Truong My Lan, who was arrested in 2022, has had the death sentence imposed upon her for looting one of the country’s largest banks, over a period of 11 years.
The 67-year-old who oversaw an escalating real estate company that developed luxury apartments, offices and shopping malls, received a guilty verdict on charges of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules, at her trial in Ho Chi Minh City.
Without exaggeration, the fraudulent actions of the chair of Van Thinh Phat (VTP), were as big as any that a bank had been on the receiving end of, anywhere in the world.
She had been accused of fraud amounting to $12.5bn (£10bn), which was nearly 3 per cent of Vietnam’s 2022 GDP. The conviction related to taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank, which she controlled between 2012 to 2022, and giving them to thousands of “ghost companies”, which were essentially herself and her allies.
The verdict requires her to return $27bn, which is a sum that the prosecutors say may never actually be recovered. There is a notion that the death penalty is possibly the court’s attempt to try and encourage the businesswoman to return at least some of the missing billions.
The normally secretive authoritarian regime were uncharacteristically transparent around this case, detailing that 2,700 people were summoned to testify, with 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers involved.
This was the culmination of the “blazing furnaces” anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.
Family members confirmed that Lan will appeal against the verdict.
Guilty verdicts all round
This high-profile trial began on 5 March and had been expected to last several months, but it ended much earlier than planned, with a host of guilty verdicts. There were 85 others in the dock along side Truong My Lan and all were found guilty.
Her husband and niece were sent to jail for 9 and 17 years, respectively. Four of the defendants received life, with the remainder given prison terms ranging from 3 years to 20 years, suspended.
Trust in leadership eroded
Lan had also been accused of carrying out a substantial bribing operation to ensure her deceitful behaviour was never scrutinised. One of those receiving a life sentence was a former chief inspector at the central bank who had accepted a $5m bribe.
The death sentence was the court said for: “not only violating the property management rights of individuals, but also for pushing SCB into a state of special control, eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the party and State.”
Astonishing greed and arrogance
All the evidence arrived in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. However, prosecutors were able to prove that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, the fraudulent tycoon incredibly owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.
The court heard that over a three year period starting in February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and had it stored in her basement, in an act of remarkable greed and arrogance.
Spiralled out of control
Born in 1956 in Shantou, in the Chinese province of Guangdong, Lan started out helping sell cosmetics with her mother, a successful businesswoman in her own right, in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market.
During the period known as Doi Moi, ushered in by the Vietnamese Communist Party, she began buying land and property, developing a huge portfolio of hotels and restaurants. She was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank, in 2011, and that is when it all began, before spiralling completely out of control.
Burnt by the “Blazing Furnace”
Nguyen Phu Trong is a conservative ideologue who began his “Blazing Furnace” campaign in 2016. It has seen off two presidents, two deputy prime ministers, and hundreds of well-known business figures, who have been forced to resign or who were part of the group prosecuted. Vietnamese stocks suffered a $40bn wipe-out as a result.
His drive has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country’s richest women has joined the shameful demise.
0 Comments