Vietnamese billionaire Truong My Lan, aged 67, has been sentenced to death for embezzling funds from one of Vietnam’s largest banks over an 11-year period.
The sentencing took place on Thursday, April 11, at the historic courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City.
Truong My Lan, a prominent property developer, becomes one of the rare women in Vietnam to face the death penalty for a white-collar crime.
She was found guilty of obtaining $44 billion in loans from Saigon Commercial Bank, with authorities aiming to recover $27 billion of the missing funds—an amount deemed unlikely to be fully retrieved.
Observers speculate that the severity of the death penalty could be a strategic move by the court to compel Lan to cooperate in recovering the looted money.
The trial was a colossal affair, involving 2,700 witnesses, 10 state prosecutors, approximately 200 lawyers, and a vast amount of evidence weighing six tonnes and filling 104 boxes. Lan was one of 85 defendants in the case, all of whom denied the charges.
David Brown, a former US State Department official well-versed in Vietnamese affairs, remarked that the scale and spectacle of the trial were unprecedented in Vietnam’s communist history.
The trial unfolded as part of Vietnam’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign, spearheaded by Communist Party Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong, known as the “Blazing Furnaces” initiative.
