Vietnamese Sentenced to Death for $27 Billion Fraud Case
- VIVA.co.id/Natania Longdong
Vietnam – Behind the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, a 67-year-old Vietnamese property developer was sentenced to death on Thursday (Apr 11) for looting one of the country's largest banks over a period of 11 years.
It's a rare verdict - she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.
The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn or equivalent to IDR 697 trillion in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank.
The verdict requires her to return US$27 billion or IDR 427 trillion, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.
Pengusaha properti Truong My Lan ditangkap korupsi Rp 191 triliun
- Vietnamnet
The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media.
They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved, as quoted from BBC site.
The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five others were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges and can appeal.
All of the defendants were found guilty. Four received life in jail. The rest were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended. Truong My Lan's husband and niece received jail terms of nine and 17 years respectively.
"There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era," said David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam.
"There has certainly been nothing on this scale,"
The trial was the most dramatic chapter so far in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.
