A trial will begin in March against a group of people who embezzled 3% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP).
According to Vietnamese media VNfre and others, the trial of about 80 defendants, including Truong My Lan, chairman of Vietnamese real estate developer Van Tinpot Holdings, is scheduled to begin on March 15 on the 10th (local time). Chairman Lan was arrested in October last year and indicted in December of the same year on charges of conspiring with his aides to embezzlement 304 trillion won (about 1612.59 billion dollars) from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), which he owns 91.5%. Chairman Lan is a Chinese-Vietnam businessman who established hotels in the 1990s and built his fortune in accommodation and restaurant businesses. Since then, he has entered the real estate business and gradually increased his wealth by winning a number of development orders in Ho Chi Minh City. The SCB in question this time is also actually owned by Chairman Lan. He is known to have embezzled money for a long time by including the bank’s employees to issue illegal corporate bonds and apply for false loans. The 304 trillion won they embezzled amounted to 3% of Vietnam’s total GDP. The 80 people indicted included not only Chairman Lan’s group, but also state-run bank officials who helped them, audit officials, and prosecutors in charge of the case. Prosecutors said that the amount of bribes Lan gave to government officials and police amounted to about 6.7 billion won, considering them all accomplices and prosecuting them together. Lan’s side has hired hundreds of lawyers alone to respond to the case. The prosecution and Lan’s lawyers have already begun a tug-of-war. Both sides said they submitted 104 boxes of data to the court as of last 10th. The amount is equivalent to 6 tons in weight. The Vietnamese Communist Party, which is focusing on anti-corruption campaigns, is putting its heart and soul into the trial process against them. “The trial of them should be carried out more efficiently and quickly,” said Nguyen Phu Zong, secretary-general of the Communist Party. “We will not stop here and continue our struggle against economic criminals.”
JENNIFER KIM
ASIA JOURNAL
