Vietnamese Tycoon Given Death Penalty Over £34 Billion Bank Fraud

Truong My Lan, a 67-year-old property tycoon and chair of Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, faces mounting pressure to recover over £7 billion to reduce her death sentence to life imprisonment potentially.

Lan’s case, the most significant financial fraud in Vietnam’s history, has sent shockwaves.

Following a month-long trial in April, Lan was convicted of embezzlement, bribery, and violations of banking regulations. Over a decade, she covertly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), Vietnam’s fifth-largest lender, orchestrating a scheme involving shell companies to secure loans and siphon cash.

The total amount of money in the case is estimated at £34.5 billion, with £21 billion misappropriated and the rest allegedly embezzled.

Vietnam’s legal system allows for the possibility of reducing Lan’s death sentence to life imprisonment if she can return at least three-quarters of the embezzled funds.

However, prosecutors have emphasised the unprecedented scale of her crimes and their devastating impact on Vietnam’s economy and financial sector.

“The consequences caused by Lan are unprecedented in the history of litigation,” a prosecutor told the state-run newspaper VietnamNet. “The amount of money embezzled is unprecedentedly large and unrecoverable.

Her actions have affected many aspects of society, the financial market, and the economy.”

Despite her appeal, the court upheld Lan’s death sentence, making her one of the few women in Vietnam to receive such a penalty for white-collar crimes. Her lawyer argued mitigating circumstances, including her admission of guilt, remorse, and partial repayment of the stolen funds, but prosecutors deemed these insufficient to overturn the verdict.

Lan still has the option to request a review under Vietnam’s cassation or retrial procedures. Her arrest in 2022 triggered widespread panic, leading to a run on Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), the private institution at the heart of the scandal, which she largely controlled through proxies.

In addition to her death sentence, Lan was handed a separate life sentence in October for charges of fraud, money laundering, and illegal cross-border money transfers. The magnitude of her crimes continues to reverberate through Vietnam’s financial and legal systems.