Vietnam death row tycoon faces money laundering trial

Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan (C) looks on at a court in Ho Chi Minh city on September 19, 2024. – A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totalling 27 billion USD goes on trial on September 19, 2024 in a linked case where she and 33 other defendants are accused of money laundering. (Photo by AFP)

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion goes on trial Thursday in a linked case accused of money laundering.

Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty in April of swindling cash from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Lan and 33 other defendants now face new charges of money laundering and illegal cross-border trafficking of cash, in a trial in Ho Chi Minh City that is expected to last a month.

READ: Vietnam sentences property tycoon to death in its largest ever fraud case

Around 36,000 people have been identified as victims of the SCB fraud, which shocked the communist nation and prompted rare protests from those who lost their money.

State media reports said Lan and her associates stole around $18 billion by taking assets from SCB and issuing bonds between early 2018 and October 2022.

Dozens of victims in the case held protests in central Hanoi this week, demanding authorities help them get their money back.

Media reports quoted a copy of the indictment as saying the 67-year-old tycoon had ordered her accomplices to withdraw cash and transfer it out of SCB’s system.

She then hid the origins of the cash and used it to settle debts between companies or transferred the money abroad for fake contracts.

Lan’s driver transported the equivalent of more than $4.4 billion in cash from SCB’s headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City to her nearby home and to Van Thinh Phat’s head office, the reports said.

READ: What to know about real estate tycoon sentenced to death in Vietnam

A total of $1.5 billion was transferred to foreign countries and Lan received more than $3 billion from overseas between October 2012 and October 2022, the reports said.

No specific details were available about which countries the money had been transferred to and from.

Lan was given the death penalty in the previous case after being found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion.

She is appealing against that verdict but no date for the appeal has been announced yet.

Prosecutors said the total damages caused by that scam amounted to $27 billion — a figure equivalent to six percent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product in 2023.

Vietnam’s communist leaders have intensified an anti-corruption campaign that swept through the party, police, armed forces and business community.

Thousands of people — including top officials and senior business leaders — have been caught up in the Southeast Asian country’s “blazing furnace” crackdown on graft.