A Vietnamese property tycoon billionaire has been sentenced to death for her part in a huge £35billion fraud.
Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, is accused of stealing cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a period of a decade. She was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rule and sentenced by a court in Ho Chi Minh City to death.
Her team confirmed before the verdict was reached they planned to appeal. Authorities confirmed more than 2,500 people were called on to testify during the trial. Some 85 defendants were tried alongside Lan, with evidence produced in 104 boxes and weighing six tons.
The 67-year-old chair of the company was accused of fraud amounting to $12.5bn - nearly 3% of the country's GDP in 2022. Her arrest in 2022 came as the south-east Asian country broadened it years-long anti-graft drive and was one of the most high profile. Known as the so-called Blazing Furnace campaign, it caused former president Vo Van Thuong to resign in March after being implicated, as well as another president and two deputy prime ministers.
The 67-year-old chair was accused of fraud amounting to nearly 3% of the country's total GDP in 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)David Brown, a retired US state department official, told the BBC: "There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era. There has certainly been nothing on this scale. What Nguyen Phu Trong and his allies in the party are trying to do is to regain control of Saigon, or at least stop it from slipping away.
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"Up until 2016 the party in Hanoi pretty much let this Sino-Vietnamese mafia run the place. They would make all the right noises local communist leaders are supposed to make, but at the same time they were milking the city for a substantial cut of the money being made down there." Rumours about Lan's arrest in 2022 on social media triggered a run on (SCB) over suspicions of ties between her and the bank. Vietnam's central bank was forced to reassure depositors at SCB and said it was monitoring the situation there.
They said in a statement: "The State Bank of Vietnam affirmed it will have solutions and policies in accordance with the law to ensure the rights and interests of depositors, maintain the stability of SCB in particular and the system of credit institutions in general."
In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's top politician, said the anti-corruption fight would "continue for the long-term."
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