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HANOI: A court in Vietnam on Tuesday (Dec 3) upheld a death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan after rejecting her appeal against a conviction for embezzlement and bribery in a high-profile US$12 billion fraud case.
Lan, 68, was sentenced to death in April for her role in swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) in what was Vietnam’s biggest financial fraud case.
She appealed the verdict in a month-long trial, but on Tuesday the court in Ho Chi Minh City determined that there was “no basis” to reduce her sentence.
However, there is still a chance for Lan to escape the death penalty.
The court said Tuesday that if she returns three-quarters of the stolen assets, her sentence could be reduced to life imprisonment.
Her husband Eric Chu Nap Kee, a Hong Kong billionaire, had his sentence reduced from nine years in prison to seven.
Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, is one of the most famous business executives and state officials jailed in the communist country’s lengthy anti-graft campaign known as “Blazing Furnace”.
“The consequences Lan caused are unprecedented in the history of litigation and the amount of money embezzled is unprecedentedly large and unrecoverable,” the prosecution was quoted as saying at the appeal hearing by state-run online newspaper VietnamNet.
“The defendant’s actions have affected many aspects of society, the financial market, the economy,” it said.
Tens of thousands of people who invested their savings in SCB lost money, shocking the nation and prompting rare protests from the victims.
Lan earlier told the court that “the quickest way” to repay the stolen funds would be “to liquidate SCB, and sell our assets to repay SBV (State Bank of Vietnam) and the people”.
“I feel pained due to the waste of national resources,” Lan said last week, adding she felt “very embarrassed to be charged with this crime”.
Lan’s defence team had argued that she already paid back the money needed to be eligible for a sentence reduction.
Lan has turned over more than 600 family properties to the court, it acknowledged – but it was unclear how much money they were worth.
Lan’s lawyer told AFP on Tuesday that in any case, it would likely be years before Lan faces execution, which is carried out by lethal injection in Vietnam.
Lan owned just 5 per cent of shares in SCB on paper, but at her trial, the court concluded that she effectively controlled more than 90 per cent through family, friends and staff.
In April, a former chief inspector of the State Bank was given life in prison for accepting a five-million-dollar bribe to overlook financial problems at SCB. The court upheld the sentence on Tuesday.
The bank said in April that it pumped funds into SCB to stabilise it, without revealing how much.
Among the assets that Lan and Van Thinh Phat own are a shopping mall, a harbour and luxurious housing complexes in Ho Chi Minh City.
During her first trial in April, Lan was found guilty of embezzling US$12.5 billion, but prosecutors said the total damages caused by the scam amounted to US$27 billion – equivalent to around 6 per cent of the country’s 2023 GDP.
Aside from Lan, a total of 47 other defendants requested reduced sentences at the appeal.
Last month, Lan was convicted of money laundering and jailed for life in a separate case.
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