Truong Mi Lan (Truong My Lan)

Truong Mi Lan (Truong My Lan)

Biography

2024: Sentence - death penalty

On April 11, 2024, a court Vietnam sentenced to death 67-year-old entrepreneur Truong My Lan in the case of the country's largest fraud in history. The woman was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules. The defendant is charged with embezzlement of more than $12 billion.

Truong Mi Lan is the former chairman of the board of the developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group. According to the case file, for many years the defendant withdrew money from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), in which she owned more than 90% of the shares. By providing loans to shell companies, approximately $12.5 billion was stolen from the bank, but the real damage from the actions of the fraudster and related persons is estimated at $27 billion. This is equivalent to about 6% of Vietnam's GDP in 2023. It is said that in order to conceal violations and the real financial situation of the bank, the woman gave huge bribes to representatives of regulatory authorities.

The investigation claims that the victims of the fraud were all SCB bondholders who could not withdraw their money and did not receive interest. In total, according to the Air Force, about 42 thousand people were injured from the scam. According to The Guardian, the death sentence is an unusually severe punishment for corruption crimes in Vietnam. Truong Mi Lan does not admit his guilt, and her representatives announced their intention to appeal.

In addition to the entrepreneur herself, more than 80 people are involved in the case. They received various punishments ranging from three years probation to life imprisonment. Among them are husband Lan Eric Chu, a Hong Kong businessman sentenced to nine years in prison, and her niece, who received 17 years in prison.^[1]

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