Truong My Lan (68) was sentenced to death for stealing around US$12.5 billion in bank deposits in what is the largest reported case of fraud in Vietnam’s history. It is an unprecedented sentence in the Asian country, whose regime has launched an intense campaign against corruption. The gigantic amount of the fraud, 304 million dong (national currency), is equivalent to 3% of the country’s GDP in 2022.
According to the court decision, Truong My Lan and his accomplices carried out a massive fraud over 11 years during which they stole the savings and investments of thousands of clients of the Saigon Commercial Stock Bank (SBC), one of the largest financial institutions. big ones in the country. The modality was the granting of illegal loans to fictitious companies.
The anti-corruption campaign, known as Blazing Furnace, promoted by Nguyen Phu Tong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, has attracted great attention with this trial.
The real estate businesswoman’s defense argued that she only had control of 15% of the bank and had no official position in it, so the embezzlement accusations could not apply to her case.
Vietnam imposes the death penalty not only for violent crimes but also for economic crimes. According to numbers from human rights groups, hundreds of convicts have been executed in recent years, mainly by lethal injection.
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– 2024-04-21 14:45:42
