HANOI: A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death in a US$27 billion fraud case will face a second trial for fraud and money laundering this month, state media said on Friday (Sep 6).
Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty in April of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.
Lan and 33 accomplices will now face a one-month trial starting Sep 19 in Ho Chi Minh City on charges of fraud, “money laundering and illegal cross-border trafficking of cash”, the city’s legal newspaper quoted the municipal court as saying.
Around 36,000 people were affected by the case, the report said.
It said Lan and her accomplices expropriated around US$18 billion by taking assets from SCB and through the issuance of bonds between early 2018 and October 2022.
To get the money, Lan, 67, ordered an accomplice to withdraw cash and transfer it out of SCB’s system.
She then hid the origins of the cash and used it to settle debts between companies or transferred the money abroad for fake contracts, the report said.
Lan had transferred US$1.5 billion to foreign countries and received more than US$3 billion from overseas between October 2012 and October 2022, the report quoted the indictment as saying.
Media reports said her driver transported the equivalent of more than US$4.4 billion in cash from SCB’s headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City to her nearby home and to Van Thinh Phat’s head office.
Lan was given the death penalty in the previous case after being found guilty of embezzling US$12.5 billion. She is appealing against that verdict.
The death sentence is an unusually severe punishment in such a case, although Vietnam is a leading executioner globally, according to Amnesty International.
Prosecutors said the total damages caused by that scam now amounted to US$27 billion – a figure equivalent to six per cent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product in 2023.