A Vietnamese court today sentenced Vietnamese real estate businesswoman Truong Mai Lan to life on financial fraud charges after she was in April sentenced to death in another trial, reported Reuters.
Lan, former director of the real estate company "Van Thinh Phat" (Van Thinh Phat Holdings), was found guilty of acquiring property through fraud, money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfers, the Vietnamese newspaper "Youth" reported. She is among the high-ranking heads of enterprises and government officials sentenced to imprisonment after the start of the "Flaming Furnace" anti-corruption campaign launched years ago. in the country ruled by the communist regime.
Lan's companies are accused of illegally acquiring more than 30 trillion dong ($1.2 billion) from issuing bonds to investors. Lan is also accused of illegally transferring $4.5 billion into and out of Vietnam, as well as laundering 445 trillion dong ($18.1 billion).
Judges said Lan had confessed to many of her crimes but rejected allegations that she directed the bond issuance, the Vietnamese newspaper Mladost added.
In April, Lan was sentenced to death in a separate trial after being found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and breach of banking rules in the country's biggest financial fraud, worth 304 trillion dong. Her arrest in 2022 triggered a massive withdrawal of funds from one of the country's largest private banks by deposit volume, Saigon Brand, which was at the center of the fraud and was largely owned by Lan through her proxies.