Billionaire Tycoon Truong My Lan Sentenced to Death for White-Collar Crimes
Vietnam has had the most spectacular trial in the country’s history, which befitted the greatest bank fraud the world has ever seen.
At the state’s yellow entrance of the courthouse since the colonial era in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan, a 67-year-old Vietnamese property developer, was handed a death sentence for frauding one of the country’s largest banks for the past 11 years.
Why Vietnam billionaire was sentenced to death
My Lan was one of the very few women who were sentenced to death in Vietnam over a white-collar crime, a rare verdict.
According to the BBC, the ruling is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the crime. My Lan was convicted after being found guilty of taking out a loan of $44bn (£35bn) from the Saigon Commercial Bank.
According to the verdict, she was meant to return a sum of $27bn, which the prosecutor had said might never be recovered. Some are of the view that the death penalty is the court’s job to force her to return some of the mission billions.
Details of death sentence to Truong My Lan
The secretive communist authorities were forthright and unusually honest about the fraud, releasing the details to the media. The authorities said 2,700 people testified against her, and ten state prosecutors and 200 lawyers worked in her prosecution.
It was learned that the evidence was in 104 boxes and weighed six tonnes. Truong My Lan, however, denied the charges and can appeal, but 85 others were tried along with her.
In addition, the court found all the defendants guilty, but four of them received live imprisonment. Others were given between 20 and three years in jail. Her husband and niece received nine and 17 years in jail, respectively.
Billionaire Tycoon Truong My Lan Sentenced to Death for White-Collar Crimes