this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 138 points 7 months ago (7 children)

I am all for billionaires facing consequences for their actions. The death penalty is still deeply immoral though. Locking financial criminals up like for example the American state did with Martin Shkreli or Sam Bankman-Fried though is completely o.K. and should happen more often.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

The death penalty is still deeply immoral though.

The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

It appears to be a method the courts are employing to encourage her to surrender overseas assets.

In this particular situation, that $27bn is over 5% of Vietnam's GDP. This is a very significant hit to the nation's financial stability and one that will likely result in substantial number of excess deaths entirely due to increased poverty. I can see the threat of execution as a method to compel repayment as necessary.

In a better world, foreign banks complicit in Truong's 11 year long theft would cooperate to return the stolen money, thereby making this threat unnecessary. But so long as foreign financial institutions can hold a nation's wealth hostage, all the Vietnamese state leadership can manage is to respond in kind.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago

5% of GDP is just absolutely insane

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Disclaimer: didn’t read the article yet.

But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone. Nobody at Saigon Commercial Bank is involved or culpable for loaning that amount to a fraudster?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I mean, when you stop and think about it, you'll realize that it's probably all a giant mafia, and she crossed the wrong people the wrong way. There's no way on earth that someone can disappear 10% of a country's GDP without anyone knowing.

There's certainly corruption all the way to the top. Everything is controlled by one party, including the banks. Everyone knew for certain

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yes the case involves over 2700 witnesses. The law in Vietnam forbid her from owning more than 5% of the bank shares. Through shell companies and other people, she owned about 90% of the bank. She then hired her own people as managers, and got them to approve loans for the shell companies she had. About 93% of the loans this bank approved were for her/her shell companies. She also had her driver withdraw the equivalent of $4billion usd, which she kept in her house (it weighed 2 tons).

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone.

Right. I'm less upset by a single individual facing execution than I am not seeing a dozen other crooks lined up on the docket.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago

I agree. Truong My Lan could just as well, lose her assets and spend her days repaying her debts to society. You know, on a normal person's wage, trying to make up for billions upon billions. Should be enough time.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

as someone opposed to prison-culture, I would suggest instead forcing them to contribute to society meaningfully through acts of service while losing privileges such as running businesses, sitting on boards, and reducing their ill-gotten gains to something akin to the average income and redistributing their stolen wealth to benefit communities.

Them sitting in a cube doesn't help society, but if they were forced to solve homelessness or else face The Cube, that would be better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So you are telling me that we should give them housing, a stable and guaranteed job and a secure income in line with the nation average? Man, I might start thinking about stealing millions, worst it can happen, I'm better off than now. /s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

are you sure? the average is sub-40k.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

40k a year is very much a different amount in various parts of the world, and even of the US. Regardless, if accommodation is already taken care of, it's not a bad amount in lots of places (just maybe not NYC or SF)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I agree, but only if they can't bribe their way out. A billion can hire a lot of people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

They were arrested for ripping off people who were already rich. Nobody cares if a billion poors get ripped off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Nah fam certain people deserve gilded intestines

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is this a Game of Thrones reference? I am confuse

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No it's a reference to an old story of a baron being attacked by peasants and having his gold melted down and poured down his throat.

Pretty sure GoT got that idea from this story

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Oh thanks, in that context the Baron story is way cooler.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I say turn them over to the Mechanicum and have yourself a new servitor loyal to the empirium.