Vietnam real estate tycoon seeks to overturn death sentence

A VIETNAM court began deliberations on property tycoon Truong My Lan’s appeal against the death penalty verdict she received in April for massive fraud.

The review by the High People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City could run to Nov 25. Forty seven other defendants will have their verdict appeals heard during the same hearing, according to local media.

Lan was also sentenced to life in prison in October after she was convicted on additional charges in a second trial. Her case is part of the one-party government’s sweeping corruption crackdown.

The 68-year-old mogul was sentenced to death in April for her role in Vietnam’s largest-ever fraud case after being found guilty of embezzling US$12.3 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank. She was also convicted of bribing government officials and violating bank lending rules.

In the second trial, Lan and her 33 co-defendants were convicted of the illegal transportation of roughly US$4.5 billion across international borders, laundering some 446 trillion dong (S$23 billion) in pilfered assets mostly from Saigon Commercial Bank, and misappropriating about 30 trillion dong from investors via bond issuances. BLOOMBERG