No escape from the law

A woman entrepreneur in Vietnam was sentenced to death recently for causing irreparable loss to a bank:

In a rare conviction for a financial crime, a property developer - a woman - in Vietnam was recently sentenced to death by the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City. The Vietnamese businesswoman, the 68-year-old Truong My Lan, was found guilty by the court and sentenced to death, which saw the end of the Communist country’s worstever corruption cases. She headed a real estate company, Van Thinh Phat, and was accused of heading ‘thousands of ghost companies’ which were used in cheating Saigon Commercial Bank of 304 trillion dong (approximately $12.54 billion) with the connivance of family members and accomplices in high positions.

Lan was arrested in October 2022.

DEFINED AS MASTERMIND

The judges, who conducted the trial in March, found her guilty of multiple counts of bribery, violating banking regulations and embezzlement. The court ordered that she pay 673.8 trillion dong ($29.6 billion) in compensation to the bank. During the announcement of the sentence, the judges said Lan had no known criminal record before the trial, and had participated in several charitable activities, but she was ‘the mastermind in the long-term scheme and committed elaborate and organized crimes, causing irrevocable consequences”.

Lan denied the charges and, according to Vietnamese law, she can appeal.