A court in Vietnam today began a second trial of a businesswoman already sentenced to death in April for her role in the country's biggest ever financial scandal.
Truong My Lan, 67, sat in the dock in Ho Chi Minh City (south) along with 33 other defendants to hear the indictment for fraud, money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfer, the Vietnamese official press reported.
According to the indictment, the defendants issued bond packages worth 31 billion dong (more than 1.13 billion euros) through the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) without guarantees for the nearly 36,000 investors, most of whom have not recovered their money.
Dozens of victims demonstrated this week in the center of the capital, Hanoi, demanding that the authorities recover their investments.
The prosecution has identified 21 companies controlled by the real estate giant Van Thinh Phat (VTP), of which Truong was chairman, as responsible for the illegal transfer of more than €4.04 billion between bank accounts in Vietnam and abroad between 2012 and 2022.
The businesswoman is also accused of embezzling €16.1 billion obtained through fraud, in the trial that is expected to last a month.
In April, the Vietnamese court sentenced Truong to death for corruption, after she had misappropriated funds from the SCB, totalling €25 billion, over a decade.
Truong's actions "eroded people's trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and the state", the jury said, according to local media, during the trial also held in Ho Chi Minh City.
The businesswoman has appealed the ruling, but no date has been set for a ruling on the appeal.
Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was one of the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption campaign in Vietnam. The so-called “Operation Burning Furnace” has reached the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics.
In March, Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong resigned after being implicated in the anti-corruption investigations.
VTP was among Vietnam’s richest real estate companies, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping malls.
Vietnam’s real estate sector has been hit particularly hard by the whole process: around 1,300 real estate companies have withdrawn from the market in the past year, and developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, according to local media.
In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's top politician, said the fight against corruption would "continue in the long term."
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