this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 33 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

The death penalty is still deeply immoral though.

The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

It appears to be a method the courts are employing to encourage her to surrender overseas assets.

In this particular situation, that $27bn is over 5% of Vietnam's GDP. This is a very significant hit to the nation's financial stability and one that will likely result in substantial number of excess deaths entirely due to increased poverty. I can see the threat of execution as a method to compel repayment as necessary.

In a better world, foreign banks complicit in Truong's 11 year long theft would cooperate to return the stolen money, thereby making this threat unnecessary. But so long as foreign financial institutions can hold a nation's wealth hostage, all the Vietnamese state leadership can manage is to respond in kind.

[–] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

5% of GDP is just absolutely insane

[–] InformalTrifle@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Disclaimer: didn’t read the article yet.

But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone. Nobody at Saigon Commercial Bank is involved or culpable for loaning that amount to a fraudster?

[–] Rinox@feddit.it 4 points 6 months ago

I mean, when you stop and think about it, you'll realize that it's probably all a giant mafia, and she crossed the wrong people the wrong way. There's no way on earth that someone can disappear 10% of a country's GDP without anyone knowing.

There's certainly corruption all the way to the top. Everything is controlled by one party, including the banks. Everyone knew for certain

[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Yes the case involves over 2700 witnesses. The law in Vietnam forbid her from owning more than 5% of the bank shares. Through shell companies and other people, she owned about 90% of the bank. She then hired her own people as managers, and got them to approve loans for the shell companies she had. About 93% of the loans this bank approved were for her/her shell companies. She also had her driver withdraw the equivalent of $4billion usd, which she kept in her house (it weighed 2 tons).

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago

But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone.

Right. I'm less upset by a single individual facing execution than I am not seeing a dozen other crooks lined up on the docket.