BangkokcTypeface:> The death sentence for Vietnamese real-estate tycoon Truong My Lan was upheld on Tuesday as the plaintiff in the country’s largest-ever financial fraud case lost her appeal for clemency.
The Supreme Court in Ho Chi Minh City declined to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, the VNExpress newspaper reported, citing court officials. The 68-year-old chairwoman of real-estate company Van Thinh Phat is alleged to have embezzled the equivalent of almost $12.6 billion, almost 3% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product in 2022.
Lan had already been sentenced to death in April this year in a first trial on charges of embezzlement, violating banking regulations and bribery. The case is one of the most sensational trials in a broad-based anti-corruption campaign launched in 2016 by Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party, who died in July. (DPA)