By Maria Ward-Brennan
Vietnamese businesswoman at the heart of the largest corruption scandal in the country’s history has been sentenced to death after looting from one of Vietnam’s largest banks.
Truong My Lan (67), the founder of Van Thinh Phat Group, a real estate development group, was arrested in 2022 for her role in a £10bn financial fraud, the country’s biggest on record.
She was accused of faking loan applications to embezzle amounting to $12.5bn (£10 billion) — nearly three per cent of the country’s 2022 GDP from Sai Gon Joint Stock Commercial Bank.
According to local media, the Thanh Nien, after a one-month trial, the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City sentenced her on three counts of property embezzlement, bribery and crime and violating regulations on lending in the operations of credit institutions.
The court imposed a death sentence for embezzlement of property, 20 years in prison for bribery and 20 years for violating lending regulations in the operations of credit institutions.
She has also been ordered to pay more than 673 billion VND (£21.4m) in first instance civil court fees.
There were also a further 84 defendants identified as accomplices helping My Lan defraud Saigon Commercial Joint Stock Bank. She and her accomplices were accused of siphoning off more than 304 trillion dongs from the bank, which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies, according to investigators.
Local media Thanh Nien reported that they were also sentenced to three years of suspended prison to life imprisonment.
After one series of big corporate arrests in 2022, Vietnamese stocks suffered a wipeout of $40bn, rattling investor confidence at a delicate moment for the fast-growing economy.
