Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death in its largest-ever fraud case

News

Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death in its largest-ever fraud case

2024-04-12 12:29 Last Updated At：12:31

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said.

The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.

Click to Gallery

Business woman Truong My Lan attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said.

Business woman Truong My Lan, center, attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Former chief inspector of State Bank of Vietnam Do Thi Nhan attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, Apr.11, 2024. She is charged with accepting $5.2 million bribe from real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who also stands the trial in the $12.5 billion fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Business woman Truong My Lan attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Defendants attend a trial for their involvement in a $12.5 billion fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. Businesswoman Truong My Lan may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off the amount, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/ VNExpress via AP).

Business woman Truong My Lan, front center, attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

More Images

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said.

Business woman Truong My Lan, center, attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Former chief inspector of State Bank of Vietnam Do Thi Nhan attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, Apr.11, 2024. She is charged with accepting $5.2 million bribe from real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who also stands the trial in the $12.5 billion fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Business woman Truong My Lan attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Defendants attend a trial for their involvement in a $12.5 billion fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. Businesswoman Truong My Lan may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off the amount, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/ VNExpress via AP).

Business woman Truong My Lan, front center, attends a trial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The real estate tycoon may face the death penalty if convicted of allegations that she siphoned off an amount of $12.5 billion, nearly 3 percent of Vietnam's 2022 GDP, in its largest financial fraud case. (Thanh Tung/VnExpress via AP)

Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked her to compensate the bank $26.9 million.

Despite mitigating circumstances — this was a first-time offense and Lan participated in charity activities — the court attributed its harsh sentence to the seriousness of the case, saying Lan was at the helm of an orchestrated and sophisticated criminal enterprise that had serious consequences with no possibility of the money being recovered, VnExpress said.

Her actions “not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also push SCB (Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank) into a state of special control; eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State,” VnExpress quoted the judgement as saying.

Her niece, Truong Hue Van, the chief executive of Van Thinh Phat, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for aiding her aunt, and Lan's husband Eric Chu Nap-kee, who is from Hong Kong, was given nine years in prison.

Lan and her family established the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreigners. She started out helping her mother, a Chinese entrepreneur, sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to state media Tien Phong.

Van Thinh Phat would grow to become one of Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. This made her a key player in the country's financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in coordination with Vietnam's central bank.

The court found that she used this approach to tap SCB for cash. She indirectly owned more than 90% of the bank — a charge she denied — and approved thousands of loans to “ghost companies," according to government documents. These loans then found their way back to her, state media VnExpress reported, citing the court's findings.

She then bribed officials to cover her tracks, it added.

Former central bank official Do Thi Nhan was also sentenced Thursday to life in prison for accepting $5.2 million in bribes.

Lan's arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022. The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.

But Lan’s trial shocked the nation. Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam’s economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to pivot their supply chains away from China.

The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard. An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rents for mixed-use properties known in Southeast Asia as shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city center are still empty, according to state media.

In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician, said that the anti-corruption fight would “continue for the long term.”

At least 2,000 people arrested in pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, AP tally shows

2024-05-03 07:28 Last Updated At：07:40

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police have arrested more than 2,000 people during pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the United States in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press tally Thursday.

Demonstrations and arrests have occurred in almost every corner of the nation. In the last 24 hours, they’ve drawn the most attention at the University of California, Los Angeles, where chaotic scenes played out early Thursday when officers in riot gear surged against a crowd of demonstrators.

Hundreds of protesters at UCLA defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired flash-bangs to break up the crowds.

At least 200 people were arrested, said Sgt. Alejandro Rubio of the California Highway Patrol, citing data from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Rubio said they were being booked at the county jails complex near downtown Los Angeles.

Another 300 people voluntarily left throughout the hourslong standoff, some filing out of the encampment with their hands over their heads in a show of peaceful surrender, according to the university. Others ran away as baton-wielding officers pushed into the hordes that numbered more than 1,000 people.

Later Thursday morning, workers removed barricades and dismantled the protesters’ fortified encampment. Bulldozers scooped up bags of trash and tents. Royce Hall was covered in graffiti.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century.

The demonstrations began at Columbia University on April 17, with students calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in statement Thursday that the encampment had become "a focal point for serious violence as well as a huge disruption.” He said days of clashes between demonstrators and counterdemonstrators endangered people on campus, students were unable to get to class, buildings had to be closed and classes were canceled.

“The past week has been among the most painful periods our UCLA community has ever experienced,” he said. “It has fractured our sense of togetherness and frayed our bonds of trust, and will surely leave a scar on the campus.”

Police in riot gear poured into the UCLA campus by the hundreds early Thursday. Wearing face shields and protective vests, they held their batons out to separate themselves from demonstrators, who wore helmets and gas masks and chanted: “You want peace. We want justice.”

For hours, officers warned over loudspeakers that there would be arrests if the crowd did not disperse. Protesters and police shoved and scuffled. Police helicopters hovered and the sound of flash-bangs pierced the air. Police pulled off protesters’ helmets and goggles as they made arrests.

Police methodically tore apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and dumpsters, then pulled down canopies and tents.

The law enforcement presence and continued warnings contrasted with the scene Tuesday night, when counterdemonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment. Campus administrators and police did not intervene or call for backup for hours. No one was arrested, but at least 15 protesters were injured.

The delayed response drew criticism from political leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and officials pledged an independent review.

Ariel Dardashti, a graduating UCLA senior studying global studies and sociology, said no student should feel unsafe on campus.

“It should not get to the point where students are being arrested,” Dardashti said on campus Thursday.

Dardashti said he can relate to the trauma suffered by Palestinians.

“When my dad was fleeing Iran, he prayed that his children wouldn’t have to face antisemitism,” Dardashti said. “We’re afraid of having to flee again in the same way our parents did.”

Iranian state television carried live images of the police action at UCLA, as did Qatar’s pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite network. Live images of Los Angeles also played across Israeli television networks.

Israel has branded the protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, protest organizers — some of whom are Jewish — call it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.

President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the students’ right to peaceful protest but decried the disorder of recent days.

California Republican leaders blasted university administrations for failing to protect Jewish students and allowing protests to escalate into “lawlessness and violence.” They called for the firing of leaders at UCLA and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, and pushed for a proposal that would cut pay for university administrators.

“We’ve got a whole lot of people in these universities drawing six-figure salaries and they stood by and did nothing,” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher told reporters.

Meanwhile, protest encampments at schools across the U.S. were cleared by police — resulting in more arrests — or closed up voluntarily.

A college professor from Illinois said he suffered multiple broken ribs and a broken hand during a pro-Palestine protest on Saturday at Washington University in St. Louis.

Bystander video shows the arrest of Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He seems to be moving in to take video or photos of protesters being detained when multiple officers roughly take him down.

In a post on the social platform X, Sandra Tamari said her husband needed surgery on his hand and has nine broken ribs.

Tamari said in a statement Thursday that it was “a small price to pay for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.” Campus police referred questions to the university’s communications department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, University of Minnesota officials reached an agreement with protesters not to disrupt commencements. Similar agreements have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, a professors group at Columbia University condemned school leadership on Thursday for asking police to remove protesters in what the group called a “horrific police attack on our students.” Officers burst into a building Tuesday, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school and taking more than 100 people into custody.

Watson reported from San Diego and Keller reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Ethan Swope, Krysta Fauria, Leslie Ambriz, John Antczak, Christopher L. Keller, Lisa Baumann, Stefanie Dazio, Jae C. Hong, Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, Sarah Brumfield, Carolyn Thompson, Philip Marcelo, Steve Karnowski and Eugene Johnson.