Vietnamese real estate tycoon sentenced to life for billions in fraud in government graft crackdown

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A Vietnamese real estate tycoon was convicted Thursday of fraudulently obtaining property worth billions of dollars and sentenced to life in prison, in a case that has been a centerpiece of the government's crackdown on corruption.

Truong My Lan was already convicted in April by the same Ho Chi Minh City court of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country's gross domestic product — in a separate case and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

The trials were broken into two parts due to the number of allegations against her, and Thursday's verdict adds to Lan's legal troubles as she awaits the appeal of her death sentence to be heard.

Vietnam has handed down more than 2,000 death sentences in the past decade and executed more than 400 prisoners. It is a possible sentence for 14 different crimes but is generally only applied in cases of murder and drug trafficking.

“Standing here today is a price too expensive for me to pay. I consider this my destiny and a career accident,” the VNexpress online newspaper quoted Lan, the chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat, as telling the judges in her closing statement last week.

“For the rest of my life, I will never forget that my actions have affected tens of thousands of families.”

Nguyen Hieu, a schoolteacher whose life savings of $36,000 is tied up in illegal bonds issued by Lan's company, said the life sentence was fair.

“She deserves the punishment,” he said, adding that he hoped the death sentence from the first trial is commuted so that Lan has the opportunity to pay back her victims.

Thirty three others were tried as co-defendants in the case but details on the other verdicts were not immediately available.

In addition to obtaining property by fraud, Lan was also convicted of money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfer charges, according to state-run media.

She was accused of raising $1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, according to state media reports.

She was also found guilty of siphoning off $18 billion obtained through fraud and for using companies controlled by her to illegally transfer more than $4.5 billion in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.

It was not immediately clear if Lan would appeal the verdict and no date has yet been set for her appeal of her death penalty conviction to be heard.

In the April conviction, she was found to have orchestrated financial fraud amounting to $12.5 billion for illegally controlling a major bank allowing loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion, according to state media reports.

Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022.

The Communist Party's “blazing furnace” campaign has also touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics.

Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign. Since 2016, thousands of party officials have been disciplined, including former President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the former head of parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue, both of whom resigned.

In all, eight members of the powerful Politburo have been ousted on corruption allegations, compared to none between 1986 and 2016.

The anti-corruption drive began in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 that authorities began scanning the private sector. Since then, several owners of Vietnam’s fast-growing businesses have been arrested.

The campaign had been the hallmark of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician. who died earlier this year at age 80.

The ideologue had called corruption a grave threat to the party and vowed that the campaign would be a “blazing furnace” in which no one was untouchable.

In another high-profile case, business tycoon Trinh Van Quyet was found guilty in August of defrauding stockholders of nearly $150 million by falsely inflating the value of his company.

The Hanoi People's Court sentenced Quyet to 21 years in prison and convicted 49 co-defendants on a variety charges, with sentences ranging from probation to multiple years in prison.

Lan and her family established the Van Thinh Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shifted from a state-run economy to a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreign investors. She started out helping her mother, a Chinese entrepreneur, sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to the state media outlet Tien Phong.

Van Thinh Phat became one of Vietnam’s richest real estate companies, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry.

Lan’s first trial shocked many Vietnamese.

Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam’s economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam is trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to diversify supply chains away from China.

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Rising reported from Bangkok.