HANOI (Reuters) – A court docket in Vietnam on Tuesday upheld a dying sentence for actual property tycoon Truong My Lan after rejecting her attraction in opposition to a conviction for embezzlement and bribery in a high-profile $12 billion fraud case, state media reported.
Lan, the chairwoman of actual property developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was sentenced to dying in April for her position in what was Vietnam’s largest monetary fraud case on file.
The Excessive Folks’s Court docket in southern Ho Chi Minh Metropolis decided there was no foundation to cut back Lan’s dying sentence, reported on-line newspaper VnExpress.
If Lan is ready to return three-quarters of the cash embezzled whereas on dying row, it’s attainable the sentence may very well be commuted to life imprisonment, the report stated.
She is without doubt one of the most well-known enterprise executives and state officers jailed within the communist nation’s prolonged anti-graft marketing campaign often called “Blazing Furnace”.
“The implications Lan precipitated are unprecedented within the historical past of litigation and the amount of cash embezzled is unprecedentedly massive and unrecoverable,” the prosecution was quoted as saying on the attraction listening to by state-run on-line newspaper VietnamNet.
“The defendant’s actions have affected many elements of society, the monetary market, the financial system,” it stated.
State media cited Lan’s lawyer as saying she had many mitigating circumstances, together with “having admitted guilt, exhibiting regret and paying again a part of the amount of cash embezzled”, however prosecutors stated that was inadequate.
Reuters couldn’t instantly attain Lan’s legal professionals for remark.
Lan nonetheless has the proper to request a assessment below Vietnam’s cassation or retrial procedures.
Lan’s arrest in 2022 sparked a run on one of many nation’s largest non-public banks by deposits, Saigon Joint Inventory Business Financial institution (HM:) (SCB), which was on the centre of the fraud and largely owned by Lan by her proxies.
Paperwork reviewed by Reuters confirmed Vietnam’s central financial institution had as of April pumped $24 billion in “particular loans” into SCB in an “unprecedented” rescue.
Other than the dying sentence, Lan was handed a life sentence at a separate trial in October after being discovered responsible of acquiring property by fraud, cash laundering and unlawful cross-border cash transfers.
