Female property developer Truong My Lan is sentenced to DEATH for $12.5billion financial fraud - one of the biggest corruption cases in history - in Vietnam

A top Vietnamese property tycoon has been sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated $27 billion in damages. 

Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was accused of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion (£10 billion) - nearly 3 per cent of the country's 2022 GDP. 

She illegally controlled the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 to 2022 to siphon of these funds through thousands of ghost companies and by paying bribes to government officials.

More than a dozen police cars and vans carrying the defendants - a list that includes former central bankers, ex-government officials and previous SCB executives - arrived at the colonial-era courthouse in the early morning.

After a five-week trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Lan and 85 others faced verdicts and sentencing on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and violations of banking law.

Lan was found to have embezzled $12.5 billion, but prosecutors said Thursday the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27 billion - a figure equivalent to six percent of the country's 2023 GDP. The 67-year-old has denied the charges and blamed her subordinates. 

Most of the accused sat in the courtroom with their heads bowed Thursday, although Lan could be seen fidgeting and looking up from the front row.

Prosecutors call for Lan to face the death sentence is an unusually severe punishment in such a case.

Lan's arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022. 

The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.

At one point in 2022, Vietnamese stocks suffered a $40 billion wipeout following a series of big corporate arrests, rattling investor confidence at a delicate moment for the fast-growing economy. 

The scale of Lan's fraud has shocked the nation. VTP was among Vietnam's richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers.

From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits, Lan appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies, investigators said.

Lam will appeal the verdict, a family member told reporters before it was issued.

She and the others were arrested as part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam's business elite in recent years.

Lan appeared to say in final remarks to the court last week that she had thoughts of suicide.

'In my desperation, I thought of death,' she said, according to state media.

'I am so angry that I was stupid enough to get involved in this very fierce business environment - the banking sector - which I have little knowledge of.'

Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam's economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to pivot their supply chains away from China. 

Hundreds of people began to stage protests in the capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, a relatively rare occurrence in the one-party communist state, after Lan's arrest in October 2022.

Police have identified around 42,000 victims of the scandal, which has shocked the Southeast Asian country.

Lan, who is married to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman also on trial, is accused of setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned a 90 percent stake.

Police say the scam's victims are all SCB bondholders who cannot withdraw their money and have not received interest or principal payments since Lan's arrest.

Prosecutors said during the trial they had seized more than 1,000 properties belonging to Lan.

Authorities have also said $5.2 million allegedly given by Lan and some SCB bankers to state officials to conceal the bank's violations and poor financial situation was the largest-ever bribe recorded in Vietnam.

The woman who was offered the bribe - Do Thi Nhan, the former head of the State Bank of Vietnam's inspection team - said during the trial the cash was handed to her in Styrofoam boxes by the former CEO of SCB, Vo Tan Van.

After realising they contained money, Nhan refused the boxes but Van declined to take them back, state media reported.

More than 4,400 people have been indicted during Vietnam's corruption crackdown, across more than 1,700 graft cases, since 2021.

A top Vietnamese luxury property tycoon - Do Anh Dung, head of the Tan Hoang Minh group - was sentenced to eight years in prison last month after he was found guilty of cheating thousands of investors in a $355 million bond scam.

The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard by the crackdown.

An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rent for shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city center are still empty, according to state media.

In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's top politician, said that the anti-corruption fight would 'continue for the long term.'