- Vietnam’s largest-ever financial fraud case was orchestrated by real estate mogul Truong My Lan, who received a death sentence. Lan, a prominent businessman in Vietnam for many years, was found guilty of fraud of $12.5 billion, or about 3% of the nation’s GDP in 2022. In addition, she unlawfully oversaw a sizable bank and approved loans that caused $27 billion in losses. Vietnam usually imposes the death penalty for serious crimes like murder or terrorism, but the death penalty for financial offenses is uncommon there.
- The Communist Party launched its anti-corruption “Blazing Furnace” campaign in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 that government agents started looking into the private sector. Since then, a number of company owners in Vietnam who are expanding quickly have been imprisoned. The next case expected to be tried is that of Trinh Van Quyet, the former chair of FLC, a real estate business that now controls Bamboo Airways, the third-largest airline in Vietnam. The trial of Lan serves as “an example” for future instances.
- Vietnam’s senior politician, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, is known for his anti-corruption campaigns. The 79-year-old ideologue has promised that the campaign would be a “blazing furnace” where no one is safe from corruption, which he sees as a serious threat to the party.
- The Vietnamese business community was shaken by Lan’s death sentence and became worried about the future. With 1,300 property companies expected to have left the market in 2023 and tall buildings sitting unoccupied in key cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the real estate industry is in dire straits.
- As for public opinion on corruption in Vietnam, it remains divided despite a protracted fight against it, according to the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, an annual poll based on interviews with close to 20,000 respondents. The study revealed that although there were fewer requests for bribes, fewer respondents believed that the government was genuinely committed to combating corruption in 2023 compared to the previous year.
- Giang stated that it was hard to foresee what would happen next since for Vietnam, these were now “uncharted waters.”
- “This is something we haven’t really seen before,” he remarked.
Source:
Associated Press
