Vietnam tycoon Lan gets life imprisonment; has already been sentenced to death in a separate trial

HANOI – A court in Vietnam on Thursday handed real estate tycoon Truong My Lan a life sentence on financial fraud charges after she was sentenced to death in a separate trial in April.

Lan, the chairman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of obtaining property through fraud, money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfers, state-run newspaper Tuoi Tre said.

Lan is among high-profile businessmen and state officials caught in the communist-ruled country’s yearslong anti-graft campaign known as “Blazing Furnace.”

Lan’s companies were accused of illegally raising more than 30 trillion dong ($1.2 billion) by issuing bonds to investors, according to a police statement released ahead of the trial.

Lan was also accused of illegally transferring US$4.5 billion to and from Vietnam and laundering 445 trillion dong ($18.1 billion), the statement said.

The judges said Lan acknowledged many of her wrongdoings but refuted allegations that she directed the bond issuance, Tuoi Tre reported.

Reuters could not immediately reach her lawyers for comment.

In April, Lan was sentenced to death in a separate trial after being found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking regulations in a VND304 trillion financial fraud, the country’s largest ever.

Her arrest in 2022 sparked a run on one of the country’s largest private banks by depositors, Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which was at the center of the fraud and majority owned by Lan through her proxies.

Documents reviewed by Reuters showed that Vietnam’s central bank pumped $24 billion in “special loans” into the SCB from April in an “unprecedented” bailout. REUTERS