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Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan has lost her appeal against her death sentence for masterminding the world’s biggest bank fraud.
The 68-year-old is now in a race for her life because the law in Vietnam states that if she can pay back 75 percent of what she took, her sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.
In April the trial court found that Truong My Lan had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of US$ 44bn (£34.5bn).
Of that prosecutors say US$ 27bn was misappropriated, and US$ 12bn was judged to have been embezzled, the most serious financial crime for which she was sentenced to death.
It was a rare and shocking verdict – she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.
On Tuesday, the court said there was no basis to reduce Truong My Lan’s death sentence. However, she could still avoid execution if she returns US$ 9bn, three-quarters of the US$ 12bn she embezzled. It’s not her final appeal and she can still petition the president for amnesty.
During her trial Truong My Lan was sometimes defiant, but in the recent hearings for her appeal against the sentence she was more contrite.
She said she was embarrassed to have been such a drain on the state, and that her only thought was to pay back what she had taken.
Born into a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother. She began buying land and property after the Communist Party introduced economic reform in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants. (BBC)
