Vietnam: Billionaire Sentenced to Death in Fraud Case

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Facts

• Truong My Lan, the Chairwoman of Vietnamese real estate development company Van Thinh Phat, has been sentenced to death by a Ho Chi Minh City jury on charges of stealing $44B from the Saigon Commercial Bank for over a decade.¹
• Truong, 67, is accused of fraudulently taking out loans from the bank over 11 years. Prosecutors said she had her driver withdraw more than $4B in cash over three years and store it in her basement, an amount that could weigh two tons.²
• She's also accused of committing bribery and violating banking rules, with the total amount embezzled estimated at $12.5B. However, prosecutors have calculated damages as an estimated $27B.³
• The crime that Truong was sentenced to death was embezzlement between 2018 and 2022, though she was sentenced to 20 years for each of her other two crimes — bribery and banking violations.⁴
• Her bank shares were found to be criminal as Vietnamese law only allows individuals to own up to 5%, and she owned over 90%. According to prosecutors, she used hundreds of shell companies and people as her proxies to circumvent the rule.²
• This is the latest verdict among thousands of corruption cases since 2021, led by Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong. Former Pres. Vo Von Thuong was convicted last month of 'violations and flaws' that 'negatively affected public perception.'³

Sources: ¹barrons.com, ²BBC News, ³Guardian and ⁴New York Times.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by The Sun. Vietnam is known for conducting show trials, but the amount of detailed effort prosecutors put into this case shows it may be different this time around. Truong, whose ancestry dates back to Saigon before the Communist government's economic crackdown, has been growing her portfolio for decades, from selling cosmetics to purchasing real estate. She may very well have been trying to bypass the government's strict rules on wealth.
• Narrative B, as provided by Investment Monitor. While Vietnam may prosecute some real criminals here and there, its overall anti-corruption agenda appears to be aimed at ousting political rivals and stifling normal business practices. Government officials, for instance, are, out of pure fear of being charged with corruption, refusing to approve investments and thus leaving public programs in limbo. By inhibiting business deals, the ruling party is kneecapping its own state-run economic goals.

Predictions