Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for 44 billion dollar credit fraud

The most spectacular trial ever held in Vietnam, responding to one of the biggest bank frauds the world has ever seen, writes the BBC.

A 67-year-old Vietnamese investor was sentenced to death Thursday for robbing one of the country's biggest banks over an 11-year period.

Decision is rare! Truong My Lan is one of the few women in Vietnam who has been sentenced to death for a crime.

Truong My Lan was convicted of taking 44 billion dollars in loans from the Saigon Trade Bank.

The decision requires it to return $27 billion, a sum the prosecutors said could never return.

According to authorities, two thousand and 700 people were called to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and about 200 lawyers were involved.

The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing six tons. Eighty-five others were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges.

All the defendants were convicted. Four received life imprisonment. Others were given prison sentences ranging from 20 years to three years on bail.

Truong My Lan comes from a kino-vietmese family in Ho Chi Minh, once Saigon.

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She began her career as a shopping staller, selling cosmetics with her mother, but began buying land and property after the Communist Party launched a period of economic reforms known as Doi Moi in 1986. In the 1990s, it owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

By 2011, Truong My Lan was a prominent business figure in the town of Ho Chi Minh and was allowed to organise the unification of three smaller banks, limited to money in one of the largest entities: Saigon Commercial Bank.

Vietnamese law prohibits each individual from holding more than 5% shares in each bank. But prosecutors say through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as its representative, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.

The vast sum is staggering. Its loans constituted 93% of the entire bank loan.

According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Dong Vietnamese, more than $4 billion, money from the bank and store it in her basement.

She was also charged with bribery to make sure her loans were never reviewed. Even a former chief inspector in the central bank was sentenced to life imprisonment for taking a $5 million bribe.