Vietnam’s Hanoi According to official media, a Vietnamese court on Tuesday affirmed real estate mogul Truong My Lan’s death sentence after dismissing her appeal against her conviction for embezzlement and bribery in a well-known $12 billion fraud case.
In April, Lan, the head of the real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, received a death sentence for her involvement in the largest financial fraud case in Vietnam’s history.
According to the online publication VnExpress, the High People’s Court in southern Ho Chi Minh City found no justification for lowering Lan’s death sentence.
According to the report, Lan’s sentence can be commuted to life in prison provided he can refund three-quarters of the money that was embezzled while he was on death row.
She is among the most well-known state officials and business leaders imprisoned during the communist nation’s protracted anti-graft campaign, dubbed as Blazing Furnace.
During the appeal hearing, the prosecution cited the state-run online journal VietnamNet as saying that the repercussions Lan caused are unparalleled in the history of litigation and that the amount of money embezzled is unprecedentedly vast and unrecoverable.
It claimed that the defendant’s conduct had impacted the economy, the financial system, and many facets of society.
According to Lan’s attorney, who was quoted by state media, she had numerous mitigating circumstances, such as having acknowledged her guilt, expressing regret, and repaying a portion of the money that was embezzled. However, prosecutors claimed that was not enough.
Lan’s attorneys were not immediately available for comment by Reuters.
Lan is still able to ask for a review in accordance with Vietnam’s retrial or cassation processes.
One of the biggest private banks in the nation by deposits, Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), was at the heart of the scam and was mostly owned by Lan through her proxies. When Lan was arrested in 2022, it sparked a run on the bank.
According to documents Reuters examined, Vietnam’s central bank had contributed $24 billion in special loans to SCB as of April.
After being found guilty of obtaining property through fraud, money laundering, and unlawful cross-border money transfers, Lan was given a life sentence in addition to the death penalty during a second trial in October.
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