Truong My Lan's second trial results in life in prison

The court found the real estate tycoon guilty of embezzlement. In the first trial concluded in April, the judges had imposed the death penalty, against which an appeal is pending. Hanoi has handed down over 2,000 death sentences in recent decades with more than 400 executions.

Hanoi (AsiaNews) - A new sentence, this time to life imprisonment, for the 68-year-old businesswoman and real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who in a first case concluded in April was given the death penalty in connection with a .5 billion fraud, equivalent to 3% of Vietnam's GDP in 2022.

Today, the Ho Chi Minh City Criminal Court found the woman guilty of embezzling billions of dollars worth of property, in a crescendo of proceedings - and arrests - by the Hanoi government in the anti-corruption campaign behind which is the internal power struggle.

The proceedings were split into two parts due to the many charges against the tycoon, and the guilty verdict handed down today, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment imposed by the judges as the verdict was read out, adds to the litigation already underway: Lan is awaiting the appeal verdict for the death sentence in the first trial strand.

Hanoi has handed down more than 2,000 death sentences in recent decades and sent more than 400 prisoners into the hands of the executioner. According to Vietnam's legal system, capital punishment is provided for 14 different crimes, but is generally only applied in cases of murder and drug trafficking.

‘Being here today is too painful a price for me to pay. I consider it my fate and an accident of fate,' the real estate company chairman Van Thinh Phat told the judges in his closing argument last week, according to reports by VNexpress online. ‘For the rest of my life, I will never forget that my actions,’ the businesswoman concluded, ‘affected tens of thousands of families.

Another 33 people were tried as co-defendants in the case, but details of the other verdicts have not been made public. According to state media reports, in addition to obtaining property through fraud, Lan was also convicted of money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfer. The woman allegedly raised up to USD 1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally and fraudulently through four companies.

She was also found guilty of embezzling billion and using companies she controlled to illegally transfer more than .5 billion in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022. It is currently unclear whether she will appeal the verdict and no date has yet been set for an appeal hearing against the death sentence.

Lan's arrest in October 2022 (and subsequent capital punishment by lethal injection) is part of an anti-corruption initiative called the ‘Fiery Furnace’ that started in 2016 and which, six years later, has seen a marked acceleration that has affected and swept through the country's upper echelons. Two presidents and two heads of government have been forced to resign in recent years, but this is just the tip of the iceberg that includes hundreds of Communist Party officials at all levels; for some, death sentences have been sought .

Many people have been arrested or disciplinary sanctions imposed in an attempt to curb a phenomenon that threatens to undermine the country's economy, as demonstrated by the 'crisis ’ in vehicle registration. According to the United Nations Development Programme and other NGOs on the ground, corruption is so deep-rooted that in some provinces many people say they pay bribes just to obtain services and medical care even in public hospitals.