Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for looting bank of $44bn

Truong My Lan, a Vietnamese billionaire, has been given the death penalty for robbing one of the biggest banks in Vietnam during an 11-year period.

Fitting for one of the biggest bank frauds the world has ever witnessed, it was the most dramatic trial to be held in Vietnam.

At the opulent yellow portico of the Ho Chi Minh City courthouse dating back to the colonial era, Truong My Lan was condemned.

One of the few women in Vietnam to receive a death sentence for a white-collar crime is the 67-year-old Vietnamese property developer who was given the death penalty on Thursday.

The decision, according to the BBC, reflects the staggering scope of the scam.

After being found guilty, Truong My Lan borrowed $44 billion (£35 billion) from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The jury’s decision mandates that she return $27 billion, a figure that the prosecution claimed might never be found part people think the court is attempting to get her to return part of the billions that have gone missing by imposing the death penalty.

The usually reclusive communist officials were remarkably transparent about this case, providing the media with every little detail.

Ten state prosecutors and roughly 200 solicitors were among the approximately 2,700 witnesses called to testify, according to the BBC.

A total of six tonnes of boxes containing the evidence were tried together with 85 defendants, including Truong My Lan, who refuted the accusations.

“There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era,” said David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. “There has certainly been nothing on this scale.”

The trial was the most dramatic chapter so far in the “Blazing Furnaces” anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.