A Vietnamese real estate tycoon has been convicted of fraudulently obtaining property worth billions of dollars and sentenced to life in prison, in a case that has been a centrepiece of the government’s crackdown on corruption.
Truong My Lan had previously been convicted in April by the same Ho Chi Minh City court of fraud amounting to 12.5 billion US dollars (£9.6 billion) — nearly 3% of the country’s gross domestic product — in a separate case and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
The trials were broken into two parts due to the number of allegations against her, and Thursday’s verdict, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, adds to Lan’s legal troubles as she awaits the appeal of her death sentence to be heard.
Vietnam has handed down more than 2,000 death sentences in the past decades and executed more than 400 prisoners. It is a possible sentence for 14 different crimes but is generally only applied in cases of murder and drug trafficking.
“Standing here today is a price too expensive for me to pay. I consider this my destiny and a career accident,” the VNexpress online newspaper quoted Lan, the chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat, as telling the judges in her closing statement last week.
“For the rest of my life, I will never forget that my actions have affected tens of thousands of families.”
Some 33 others were tried as co-defendants in the case but details on the other verdicts were not immediately available.
Lan’s sentence was expected to be announced later in the day.
In addition to obtaining property by fraud, Lan was also convicted of money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfer charges, according to state-run media.
She was accused of raising 1.2 billion dollars (£900,000) from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, according to state media reports.
She was also found guilty of siphoning off 18 billion dollars (£14 billion) obtained through fraud and for using companies controlled by her to illegally transfer more than 4.5 billion dollars (£3.5 billion) in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.
It was not immediately clear if Lan would appeal the verdict and no date has yet been set for the appeal of her death penalty conviction to be heard.
In the April conviction, she was found to have orchestrated financial fraud amounting to 12.5 billion dollars for illegally controlling a major bank allowing loans that resulted in losses of 27 billion dollars (£21 billion), according to state media reports.
Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022.
The Communist Party’s “blazing furnace” campaign has also touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics.
Former president Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.
Since 2016, thousands of party officials have been disciplined, including former president Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the former head of parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue, both of whom resigned.
In all, eight members of the powerful politburo have been ousted on corruption allegations, compared to none between 1986 and 2016.
The anti-corruption drive began in 2013, but it was not until 2018 that authorities began scanning the private sector. Since then, several owners of Vietnam’s fast-growing businesses have been arrested.
Lan and her family established the Van Thinh Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shifted from a state-run economy to a more market-centred approach that was open to foreign investors.
Van Thinh Phat became one of Vietnam’s richest real estate companies, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centres. This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry.
