Judges upheld the death sentence of real estate businesswoman Truong My Lan in a fraud case in Vietnam, according to AP News.
She was found guilty in April of embezzlement and bribery worth $12.5 billion, nearly 3% of Vietnam’s GDP in 2022. As chairman of real estate firm Van Thinh Phat, Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank from 2012 to 2022, issuing 2,500 loans.
Ho Chi Minh Court rejected her appeal, adding that her death sentence could be commuted to life if she repaid three-quarters of the losses. That amounts to about $11 billion, according to local media.
Her lawyers argued that she had recovered the money, but the court disagreed because there were legal challenges with some of the seized properties and prosecutors could not estimate their value.
Lan’s lawyers also pointed out several mitigating circumstances: she pleaded guilty, showed remorse and paid part of the amount. However, the court said that her offences had adversely affected banking activities, caused public unrest and undermined people’s trust.
Her arrest was one of the most high-profile in Vietnam’s anti-corruption campaign, which intensified after 2022. The scale of her fraud shocked the country, with analysts wondering whether other banks or companies had committed a similar fraud.
This worsened Vietnam’s economic prospects and made foreign investors nervous at a time when Vietnam sought to position itself as a home for businesses that were shifting their supply chains away from China.
The scale of the crime led to the case being split into two trials. In October, Lan was sentenced to another life term. At that trial, she was accused of raising $1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by illegally issuing bonds through four companies.
She was also found guilty of withdrawing $18 billion in fraudulently obtained funds and using companies she controlled to illegally transfer more than $4.5 billion to and from Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.
