It’s Southeast Asia’s biggest ever fraud, amounting to $12.5 billion and embroiling some of Vietnam’s top bankers and officials. And on Thursday, a Ho Chi Minh City court reached its verdict: a death sentence for Truong My Lan, a highflying 67-year-old businesswoman who began life hawking cosmetics from a market stall in the southern city before in 1992 founding Van Thinh Phat, a sprawling company which developed luxury apartments, offices, hotels, and shopping malls.
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00:00A Vietnamese real estate tycoon was sentenced to death Thursday in the country's biggest
00:04ever financial fraud case, a shocking development in an intensifying anti-corruption drive in
00:09the Southeast Asian nation. Chuong My Lan, a high-profile businesswoman who chaired a
00:14sprawling real estate company, was arrested in 2022. The 67-year-old was formally charged
00:19of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion, nearly 3% of Vietnam's 2022 GDP. A key player in
00:26Vietnam's financial world, she orchestrated the 2011 merger of the illegal Saigon Joint
00:31Stock Commercial Bank with two other lenders. The court found that she then used this to
00:35illegally control over 90% of the bank, a charge she denies, and approved thousands
00:39of loans to ghost companies that eventually found their way back to her. The court added
00:44that she then bribed officials to cover her tracks.
00:46Her case is now amongst the most high-profile and ongoing corruption drive in Vietnam known
00:51as the Blazing Furnace that has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Last
00:56month, the former president resigned after being implicated in the campaign. Analysts
01:00say that the case has dampened Vietnam's economic outlook and made foreign investors jittery.
01:26So I think it's really hard to predict what will, you know, what's going to come next.
01:32The trial against Trung Thanh and SCB is, I would say, a show trial in the sense that
01:38the government wants to make an exemplar of case for the upcoming, you know, other cases.