Vietnam property tycoon on death row also involved in $4.5bn money laundering
Crime
Police recommended new charges, saying probe has been completed
- Truong My Lan has previously been sentenced to death for over $12bn bank fraud
- So-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics
- Two presidents and two prime ministers have resigned in recent years and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed
HANOI (Reuters/Web Desk) – Vietnam real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, sentenced to death in the country's largest-ever financial fraud case, had illegally transferred money abroad, according to police, with state media on Thursday reporting $4.5 billion had been moved.
Police said late on Wednesday an investigation into those transfers and money laundering has been completed, but gave no further details, as they recommended new money laundering charges.
State media said on Thursday that Lan had illegally transferred $1.5bn out of Vietnam and moved $3bn into the country. The reports did not specify which countries were the recipients or origins of that money.
A court in April sentenced Lan to death for her role in siphoning off more than $12bn from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies, despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders.
SCB did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday and Lan's legal representatives could not be reached.
Lan is also accused of laundering 445.7 trillion dong, including the money she and her accomplices siphoned off from SCB and from her illegal bond issuance, Thanh Nien newspaper reported on Thursday.
BLAZING FURNACE
As far as the previous sentencing in the fraud case in concerned, she was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules at the end of a trial in Ho Chi Minh City.
The 67-year-old illegally controlled the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB) between 2012 and 2022 to siphon the funds through thousands of ghost companies and by paying bribes to government officials.
The value of her alleged asset appropriation was equivalent to about 3 per cent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022, and prosecutors said they seized more than 1,000 properties belonging to her.
Lan had denied charges levelled against her, instead blaming subordinates. In her final remarks to the court last week, she said she had thoughts of suicide.
“In my desperation, I thought of death,” she said, according to state media. “I am so angry that I was stupid enough to get involved in this very fierce business environment – the banking sector – which I have little knowledge of.”
The court attributed its harsh sentence to the seriousness of the case, saying Lan was at the helm of an orchestrated and sophisticated criminal enterprise that had serious consequences with no possibility of the money being recovered.
Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anticorruption drive that started in 2016 and has picked up pace since 2022.
The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics, with two presidents and two prime ministers having resigned in recent years and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed.
Lan’s husband, Hong Kong investor Eric Chu Nap-Kee, was one of the 86 on trial after being accused of setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from the Saigon bank, in which she owned a 90pc stake. Lan’s niece Truong Hue Van, who was the CEO of Van Thinh Phat, was another top figure on trial.
A total of the 84 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from probation for three years to life imprisonment.
