this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
101 points (100.0% liked)

news

23578 readers
895 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

spoilerVietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan is in a race for her life.

On Tuesday, the 68-year-old will hear the verdict in her appeal against the death sentence handed down on her in April for masterminding the world’s biggest bank fraud.

It was a rare and shocking verdict - she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.

The court found she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44 billion (£34.5 billion).

Of that prosecutors say $27 billion was misappropriated, and $12 billion was judged to have been embezzled, the most serious financial crime for which she was sentenced to death.

However, the law in Vietnam states that if she can pay back 75% of what she took, her sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

During her trial in April Truong My Lan, who had been chairwoman of the real estate firm, Van Thinh Phat Group, was sometimes defiant. But in the recent hearings for her appeal against the sentence she has been more contrite.

She has said she was embarrassed to have been such a drain on the state, and that her only thought was to pay back what she had taken.

Born into a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother. She began buying land and property after the Communist Party introduced economic reform in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

When she was convicted and sentenced in April, she was the chairwoman of a prominent real estate firm, Van Thinh Phat Group. It was a dramatic moment in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by then-Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

All of the remaining 85 defendants were convicted. Four were sentenced to life in jail, while the rest were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended. Truong My Lan's husband and niece received jail terms of nine and 17 years respectively.

The State Bank of Vietnam is believed to have spent many billions of dollars recapitalising Saigon Commercial Bank to prevent a wider banking panic. The prosecutors argued that her crimes were "huge and without precedent" and did not justify leniency.

Truong My Lan’s lawyers say she is working as fast as she can to find the $9 billion needed. But cashing in her assets is proving difficult.

Some are luxury properties in the Vietnamese capital, Ho Chi Minh City, which could, in theory, be sold quite quickly. Others are in the form of shares or stakes in other businesses or property projects.

In all the state has identified more than a thousand different assets linked to the fraud. These have been frozen by the authorities for now. The BBC understands the tycoon has also reached out to friends to raise loans for her to help reach the target.

Her lawyers are arguing for leniency from the judges on financial grounds. They say that while she is under sentence of death it will be hard for her to negotiate the best price for selling her assets and investments, and so harder for her to raise $9 billion.

She can do much better if under a life sentence instead, they say.

“The total value of her holdings actually exceeds the required compensation amount,” lawyer Nguyen Huy Thiep told the BBC.

“However, these require time and effort to sell, as many of the assets are real estate and take time to liquidate. Truong My Lan hopes the court can create the most favourable conditions for her to continue making compensation.”

Few expect the judges to be moved by these arguments. If, as expected, they reject her appeal, Truong My Lan will in effect be in a race with the executioner to raise the funds she needs.

Vietnam treats the death penalty as a state secret. The government does not publish how many people are on death row, though human rights groups say there are more than 1,000 and that Vietnam is one of the world’s biggest executioners.

Typically there are long delays, often many years before sentences are carried out, although prisoners are given very little notice. If Truong My Lan can recover the $9 billion before that happens, her life will most likely be spared.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago

We should do a lathe project that petitions Elon Musk or some other Western billionaire ghoul to bail her out (and then she ends up being executed anyway). It would be an incredibly funny bit.