Lan, chairwoman of the real estate firm Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was convicted of fraudulently siphoning $12 billion from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank into shell companies. She had seized control of 91.5 percent of SCB’s shares, allegedly using co-conspirators as proxies to circumvent strict laws against such extensive power over financial institutions, state media outlets reported.
The total takings, according to the charges on which she was convicted, were equivalent to more than 3 percent of the country’s GDP as of 2022.
The sentence is perhaps the highest-profile display of the Communist Party’s efforts to root out corruption and draw investment from international companies as firms reduce their presence in China. Lan’s husband, Eric Chu, a businessman from Hong Kong, was sentenced to nine years in prison for his alleged involvement in the fraud, according to state media.
While the majority of death sentences in Vietnam are for drug-related offenses, the one-party Communist state is also known to impose capital punishment for white-collar crimes, according to Amnesty International. The human rights organization said in a 2023 report that more than 102 people were sentenced to death there in 2022, though the number of executions was unclear due to “secrecy surrounding figures and limited access to information.”
Vietnam uses the death penalty as punishment for 22 crimes including murder, and rape and fraud, according to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which tracks the use of capital punishment globally. Embezzlement of as little as 500 million Vietnamese dong — $20,000 — of government funds qualifies for such punishment, according to the group.
