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7 months ago
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A top Vietnamese property tycoon has been sentenced to death after one of the biggest corruption cases in history.
Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was accused of fraud amounting to $12.5 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 funnel funds through thousands of ghost companies and by paying bribes to government officials.
But who exactly is Truong My Lan and how were her acts of corruption uncovered?
Read on below for everything you need to know about the individual who has been sentenced to death following the world's most high-profile corruption cases.
Truong My Lan was sentenced for embezzling $12.5billion. Prosecutors said Thursday the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27billion
Who is Truong My Lan?
Born in Shantou, in the province of Guangdong, China, Truong My Lan, 67, has long been a controversial name for her exploits in relation to business affairs.
She entered the world of business as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother, but began buying land and property after Vietnam's Communist Party ushered in a period of economic reform, known as Doi Moi, in 1986.
By the 1990s, she owned a large number of various different hotels and restaurants.
A prominent figure in Ho Chi Minh City by 2011, she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks to form Saigon Commercial Bank.
The founder of Van Thinh Phat Group, a real estate development group, she is married to Eric Chu Nap Kee, a businessman in the property sector in Hong Kong.
The trial was part of the 'Blazing Furnaces' anti-corruption campaign, which was created by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong, in 2016.
Trong previously said that 'a country without discipline would be chaotic and unstable…we need to balance democracy and law and order'.
Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.
Her husband and niece, Truong Hue Van, 34, who is the CEO of a property management firm, were also summoned to the trial where she was sentenced to death.
Lan (C), chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Holdings, sits during her trial at the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court
Lan denied the charges and blamed her subordinates. Pictured: Some of the defendants at the trial
She was convicted of taking out $44billion (£35billion) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank, $27billion of which prosecutors said may never be recovered.
Prosecutors said that she ordered her driver to withdraw 108trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4billion (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement, over a three-year period beginning in February 2019.
Lan's embezzlement of $12.5 billion equals about three per cent of Vietnam's total GDP for 2023.
Lam will appeal the verdict, a family member told reporters before it was issued.
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