Pay to Live

A Vietnamese court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence for real-estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who was convicted of embezzling billions of dollars in one of the country’s largest financial scandals, but offered her the chance to live by repaying most of the stolen funds, the Washington Post reported.

Lan, 68, was found guilty of stealing $12 billion from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she secretly controlled by holding 91.5 percent of its shares through shell companies and associates.

From 2012 to 2022, she orchestrated fake loan applications that allowed her to siphon 93 percent of the bank’s total credit, causing tens of thousands of people who invested their savings in the institution to lose their money.

Prosecutors estimated the total damages at $27 billion, about six percent of Vietnam’s GDP in 2023, the Guardian added.

After her arrest in October 2022, a run on SCB forced Vietnam’s central bank to inject $24 billion of “special loans” into the bank to rescue it.

Lan carried out the scheme by installing trusted co-conspirators in top positions at SCB, including family members while bribing regulators and manipulating the bank’s internal systems.

She was tried alongside 85 co-defendants, among them SCB executives and government officials.

During her appeal, she offered 1,500 properties to reimburse losses, but the court ruled it could not assess their value. Judges rejected her appeal, citing the massive scale of her crimes and the grave consequences for the economy as reasons to uphold her death sentence.

Even so, Vietnamese law allows Lan to reduce her death sentence to life imprisonment if she repays at least three-quarters of the stolen funds.

In a separate trial in October, Lan was sentenced to life imprisonment for fraudulently issuing $1.2 billion in bonds, primarily to SCB customers.

Lan’s prosecution is part of Vietnam’s “Blazing Furnace” anti-corruption campaign, which has targeted thousands of high-profile figures in recent years.

Vietnam carried out at least 122 executions in 2023, primarily for drug-related offenses, although officials do not make all of the statistics on the use of capital punishment publicly available.