Vietnamese real estate tycoon Trung Mai Lan (67) was sentenced to death for the largest financial fraud case in the country. Lan, who is the chairman of Van Thien Real Estate Company, was convicted of a fraud scheme worth 12.5 billion dollars or about 3% of Vietnam’s GDP.
The court ordered Lan to pay $26.9 billion in compensation to the bank and claimed that between 2012 and 2022, Lan illegally controlled SCB Bank and approved over 2,500 loans resulting in losses of approximately $27 billion for the bank. The court also accused Lan of running a criminal organization with no way to recover the lost money.
Lan’s niece, Trung Yu Van, CEO of Van Thien Real Estate Company, received a sentence of 17 years in prison for her role in aiding and abetting crime while former senior official at SCB Bank, Du Ti Nan, was given life imprisonment for accepting a bribe worth $5.2 million. The three were found guilty of their involvement in the merger of SCB Bank in 2011 through illegal activities such as bribing officials and extracting funds from the bank using straw companies.
Van Thien Phat company was founded by Lan and her family in 1992 and contributed significantly to opening Vietnam’s economy to a free market system as opposed to state control previously practiced. Initially, Lan helped Chinese businesswoman Laima sell cosmetics but later grew into one of Vietnam’s richest real estate businesses with holdings in offices, hotels shopping centers and solid presence in Vietnam’s economy.
