Vietnam Property Madam Sentenced To Death!

A prominent property tycoon has been sentenced to death for her role in Vietnam’s biggest-ever fraud case.Truong My Lan, the chair of the developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules on Thursday, in a case that has shocked the country. A total of $12.5bn (£10bn) was embezzled, the equivalent of almost 3% of Vietnamese gross domestic product, but prosecutors said on Thursday the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27bn.To cover up the fraud, Lan and other SCB bankers were accused of giving state officials $5.2m, the largest bribe recorded in Vietnam. The money was handed over in Styrofoam boxes, Do Thi Nhan, a former chief banking inspector at the State Bank of Vietnam, said during the trial. Nhan said that after realising the boxes contained money, she refused the boxes but that Lan declined to take them back, state media reported.The defendant’s actions … eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City.Lan was found guilty of swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. She had been on tried alongside 85 others, including former central bankers and government officials, as well as previous SCB executives.Documents related to the trial, kept in 105 boxes, weighed 6 tonnes, according to VN Express, which reported the authorities had installed security cameras and fire safety equipment to protect the evidence ahead of the hearings. More than 1,000 properties belonging to Lan have been seized, and nearly 2,700 individuals were summoned for the trial, which included 200 lawyers.