Vietnam death row tycoon faces money laundering trial

A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion went on trial Thursday in a related case accused of money laundering.

Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty in April of swindling cash from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Lan and 33 other defendants were brought to the court in Ho Chi Minh City early Thursday in a convoy of police vans, as dozens of fraud victims waited outside demanding to be let in to the hearing attended by nearly 100 defense lawyers.

Outside the main courtroom, around 1,000 seats were arranged in the corridor and surrounding areas, and large TV screens were set up for invited members of the public to follow the trial, state media said.

Security was tight as Lan -- wearing a face mask and flanked by police officers -- sat down for the start of a month-long trial in which she and her co-defendants face new charges of money laundering, illegal cross-border trafficking of cash and fraud.

Around 36,000 people have been identified as victims of the SCB fraud, which shocked the communist nation and prompted rare protests from those who lost their money.

Hoang Ngoc Diep told AFP that she lost 1.7 billion dong ($69,000) -- money she had saved through "blood, sweat and tears" -- after investing in an SCB bond in 2022.

"I had a mental breakdown and fell into a depression" after realizing what had happened, the 47-year-old said in an interview ahead of the trial.

"My family used to depend on the interest to take care of my mentally ill sister and to send my children to school. I can no longer afford to give my children extra classes.

"I hope that the court will have a favorable outcome so that the victims can get back their hard-earned money... and make life a little less difficult."

State media reports said Lan and her associates stole around $18 billion by taking assets from SCB and issuing bonds between early 2018 and October 2022.

Dozens of victims in the case held protests in central Hanoi this week, demanding authorities help them get their money back.

- Fake contracts -

Media reports quoted a copy of the indictment as saying the 67-year-old tycoon had ordered her accomplices to withdraw cash and transfer it out of SCB's system.

She then hid the origins of the cash and used it to settle debts between companies or transferred the money abroad for fake contracts.

Lan's driver transported the equivalent of more than $4.4 billion in cash from SCB's headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City to her nearby home and to Van Thinh Phat's head office, the reports said.

A total of $1.5 billion was transferred to foreign countries and Lan received more than $3 billion from overseas between October 2012 and October 2022, the reports said.

No specific details were available about which countries the money had been transferred to and from.

Lan was given the death penalty in the previous case after being found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion.

She is appealing against that verdict but no date for the appeal has been announced.

Prosecutors said the total damages caused by that scam amounted to $27 billion -- a figure equivalent to six percent of Vietnam's gross domestic product in 2023.

Vietnam's communist leaders have intensified an anti-corruption campaign that swept through the party, police, armed forces and business community.

Thousands of people -- including top officials and senior business leaders -- have been caught up in the Southeast Asian country's "blazing furnace" crackdown on graft.

© Agence France-Presse