A Vietnamese female billionaire, Truong My Lan, convicted of taking out $44 billion (£35 billion) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank has been sentenced to death for looting the largest banks in the country for 11 years.
On Thursday, April 11, at the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan, 67, was sentenced to death
Truong My Lan, who is also a property developer, was convicted of taking out $44 billion (£35 billion) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27 billion, a sum prosecutors said may never be retrieved.
Meanwhile some believe the death penalty is the court’s way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.
About 2,700 people were summoned to testify during the trial of Lanl, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved. The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes, while 85 defendants were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges.
“There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era,” said David Brown, a retired US State Department official with long experience in Vietnam. “There has certainly been nothing on this scale.”
