Property tycoon Truong My Lan seen at the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City on Oct. 17, 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran
A court on Thursday gave property tycoon Truong My Lan the life sentence on financial fraud charges, after she was sentenced to death in April in a separate trial.
Lan is guilty of fraudulent asset appropriation, money laundering, and illegal cross-border money transfers, the judges said at the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City.
She and her accomplices at her company Van Thinh Phat and Saigon Commercial Bank collaborated in the illegal issuance of VND30 trillion ($1.2 billion) worth of bonds, which were bought by 35,800 investors, most of them SCB customers, the judges said.
Although Lan’s lawyers have argued that she unknowingly committed the crime, the judges said that the process of how the crime was committed showed that she had an intention to defraud people.
The court found her guilty of laundering money worth VND445 trillion which she embezzled from SCB and from defrauding bond investors.
She and her accomplices are guilty of illegally sending and receiving received $4.5 billion from overseas.
This is Lan’s second trial this year. During the trial the former chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat said she had “respect for the charges of the prosecution,” but added that she was not the mastermind behind the bond issuances and did not intend to steal from investors.
She promised to use all her assets for the compensation of the victims.
“Standing here today is a price too expensive for me to pay. I consider this my destiny and a career accident,” she said in her final statement at the court last week.
In the first trial in April Lan was given the death penalty for embezzling VND677 trillion from Saigon Commercial Bank. She has appealed the verdict.
