Thank you for reading the news about Defense relationship part of US-Iraq talks in Washington next week, US official says and now with the details
Jeddah - Yasmine El Tohamy - HANOI, Vietnam: A court in Vietnam handed the death sentence on Thursday to real estate tycoon Truong My Lan for her role in a 304-trillion-dong ($12.5-billion) financial fraud, the country’s biggest on record, state media said.
Her trial, begun on March 5 and ending earlier than planned, was one dramatic result of a campaign against corruption that the leader of the ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, has pledged for years to stamp out.
Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules at the end of a trial in the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, state media said.
“We will keep fighting to see what we can do,” a family member told journalists. Before the verdict he had said Lan would appeal against the sentence.
Lan had pleaded not-guilty to the embezzlement and bribery charges, Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of Lan’s lawyers said.
“Of course she will appeal the verdict,” he added noting she was sentenced to death for the embezzlement charge and to 20 years each for the other two charges of bribery and violations of banking regulations.
Vietnam imposes the death penalty mostly over violent offenses but also for economic crimes. Human rights groups say it has executed hundreds of convicts in recent years, mainly by lethal injection.
The Thanh Nien newspaper said 84 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from probation for three years to life imprisonment. Among them are Lan’s husband, Eric Chu, a businessman from Hong Kong, who was sentenced to nine years in jail, and her niece who got 17 years.
Lan started as a cosmetics trader at the central market in Ho Chi Minh City, helping out her mother, she told judges during the trial, according to state media.
She later founded her real estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the same year when she got married, according to state media.
She was found guilty, with her accomplices of siphoning off more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank, which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders, according to investigators.
From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits triggered by Lan’s arrest, she appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies, investigators said.
These were the details of the news Defense relationship part of US-Iraq talks in Washington next week, US official says for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Arab News and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
