Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan, sentenced to death earlier this year in the country’s largest corruption case, is now on trial for additional fraud charges, according to state media.
Lan, who is the chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat, appeared in court in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday. She is facing new allegations of fraudulently obtaining property, money laundering, and conducting illegal cross-border money transfers. The trial is expected to last for one month.
According to a police statement released prior to the trial, Truong My Lan allegedly raised 30 trillion dong (approximately $1.2 billion) from nearly 36,000 investors by illegally issuing bonds through four companies. In addition to this, she is accused of laundering 445 trillion dong (around $18.1 billion) and unlawfully transferring $4.5 billion into and out of Vietnam.
The 67-year-old tycoon was sentenced to death in April after being convicted of orchestrating Vietnam’s largest financial fraud case, which totaled $12.5 billion—nearly three percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) for 2022. She was also found guilty of illegally controlling the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), facilitating loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion.
Her arrest and subsequent conviction are considered among the most high-profile cases in Vietnam’s “Blazing Furnace” anti-corruption campaign, which has intensified since 2022. This crackdown has led to the prosecution of numerous business executives, government officials, and members of the police and armed forces.
Lan and 33 of her alleged accomplices arrived at the court early Thursday in a convoy of police vans. Outside, more than a dozen victims of the fraud awaited, demanding entry to the hearing.
Approximately 36,000 individuals have been identified as victims of the SCB fraud, which sent shockwaves through the communist nation and sparked rare protests from those who lost their investments.
Hoang Ngoc Diep, a 47-year-old victim, revealed that she lost 1.7 billion dong (about $69,000), savings accumulated through “blood, sweat, and tears” after investing in an SCB bond in 2022. “I had a mental breakdown and fell into a depression,” she told the AFP news agency before the trial, explaining that her family relied on the interest from her investment to care for her mentally ill sister and to support her children’s education.
Truong My Lan and her family founded the Van Thinh Phat company in 1992, following Vietnam’s shift from a state-run economy to a more market-oriented system that welcomed foreign investment. Lan began her career by assisting her mother, a Chinese entrepreneur, in selling cosmetics at Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to the state media outlet Tien Phong.
