No letting-up: South-east Asia’s war against corruption

VIETNAM’S 10-year crusade against corruption reached a dramatic point recently when the country’s influential real estate magnate Truong My Lan was handed the most severe sentence – death – for masterminding the largest-ever fraud case in the region involving nearly S$17 billion.

The signal is crystal clear: Vietnam’s Communist Party will brook no mercy in its anti-corruption campaign, befittingly called “Blazing Furnace”. Launched in 2013, the crackdown has ensnared hundreds of senior state officials and influential business figures in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s latest fraud case involving Lan dwarfs Malaysia’s US$4.5 billion money laundering scandal involving state-owned 1MDB, but only as far as absolute sums are concerned. When it comes to reach, political implications and audacity, 1MDB arguably stands out as it involved major banks in multiple jurisdictions, including Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as prominent personalities at home and abroad. Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was also convicted for corruption in the scandal.