Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan, who has been convicted of a $12.3B fraud in her home country, has been offered a chance at clemency from lethal injection if she can pay a penalty of roughly $11B.
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Vietnamese prosecutors have offered to let Lan avoid execution if she comes up with the cash as part of an appeal of her death sentence, which was handed down by a Ho Chi Minh City court.
Lan, the 68-year-old former chair of development firm Van Thinh Phat Group, was charged and convicted as part of a yearslong anti-corruption campaign dubbed “blazing furnace” that officials in the ruling Communist Party have been waging in recent years, according to BNN Bloomberg, which also reported the prosecutor’s offer.
Her convictions include embezzling funds from Saigon Commercial Bank, bribing government officials and violating bank lending rules. Lan was convicted in April alongside 85 other defendants, including central bankers, SCB executives and government officials.
The fraud amounted to roughly 3% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product and involved more than 2,500 loans from SCB, one of the country’s largest banks that has since been bailed out by the government to avoid collapse related to the fraud.
The Vietnamese government has provided $24.5B to the bank, equivalent to 6% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product, since 2022 when Lan’s fraud was uncovered, Asia Financial reported.
“We are now trying to help her to avoid the death penalty,” Lan’s lawyer, Giang Hong Thanh, told BNN Bloomberg.
Vietnamese law allows for a jury to consider a reduction in Lan’s sentence if she’s able to return 75% of the assets she was found guilty of embezzling.
The disgraced developer has secured a $400M loan commitment from a group of overseas lenders to help pay the $11B penalty, according to her legal team, which said Lan was also pursuing other loans and investments to raise the money, according to BNN Bloomberg.
In a second trial in October, Lan was found guilty of the illegal transfer of roughly $4.5B across international borders, the laundering of $17.5B in assets stolen from SCB and the misappropriation of about $1.2B in investor funds. She was sentenced to life in prison for those charges.
Van Thinh Phat Group owns and develops properties across Vietnam including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. Its properties include Times Square Saigon, a 40-story hotel and apartment tower, and the Windsor Plaza Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, according to Reuters.
