Vietnamese real estate tycoon Trung Mai Lan was sentenced to death on Wednesday after being found guilty in the largest financial fraud case in the country. Lan, who is the chairman of the real estate company Van Thien, was convicted for a fraud case worth 12.5 billion dollars, which is approximately 3% of the country’s GDP.
The court ordered Lan to pay $26.9 billion in compensation to SCB Bank, which she illegally controlled between 2012 and 2022 and approved 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of 27 billion dollars for the bank. Despite this being her first offense, due to the severity of the case, the court justified her unusual punishment by claiming that Lan headed a criminal organization and there was no way to recover the lost money.
Lan’s niece Trung Yu Van was also sentenced to 17 years in prison for aiding and abetting a crime while a former senior official at SCB Bank Du Ti Nan was given life imprisonment for accepting a bribe of $5.2 million. The Van Thien Phat company, founded by Lan and her family in 1992, played a crucial role in opening up Vietnam’s economy to free markets. Initially, Lan helped Chinese businesswoman Laima sell cosmetics in Vietnam before expanding into one of Vietnam’s richest real estate businesses with holdings ranging from offices to hotels and shopping centers.
The court found that Lan used her connections with SCB Bank to extract funds from it indirectly owning about 90% of its shares and approving thousands of loans to straw companies. She was accused of bribing officials to cover her tracks during this period. The verdict marked an end to one of Vietnam’s most high-profile financial scandals that has rocked the country’s banking industry and tainted its reputation abroad.
