A Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan has been sentenced to d£ath for fraud. Lan was sentenced to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024, in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever.
The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was accused of fra¥d amounting to $12.5 billion- nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.
She illegally controlled the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 to siphon the funds through thousands of ghost companies and by paying bribes to government officials.
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 so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Bo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.
But it’s the scale of Lan’s trial that has shocked the nation. VTP was among Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centres.
The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard: An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rent for shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city centre are still empty, according to state media.
In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician, said that the anti-corruption f#ght would “continue for the long term.”
