How did billionaire Truong My Lan steal 3% of Vietnam's 2022 GDP? | DW News

to Vietnam where a property Tycoon has been sentenced to death in the country's biggest ever financial fraud case trong Myan was one of 85 people on trial for embezzling 12.5 billion dollar the death sentence is seen as unusually severe lanzer last year was part of an anti-corruption drive that's engulfed the top levels of Vietnamese politics let's look at this with Chong Au Vu who is a professor of political science and director of the us Vietnam Research Center at the University of Oregon welcome to DW Professor 125 billion dollar sounds like an awful lot of money put that in perspective for us that's uh about 10% of Vietnam's uh anal GDP gross domestic products meaning the total uh value of uh Vietnamese what Vietnamese workers make a year and that's about 10% of of of that number and so and so how did trong Myan do this oh well that this is just a uh you know basic uh bank fraud uh and she was able to do that to do it because he was able to um bribe top officials uh through her political connections and she was just imas in money from uh the bank to uh to use for real estate investment and she was able to do that like I said you know because of the her political connection political protection by the top officials right because people are going to look at this and you think how do you steal 10% of a country's GDP and nobody notice but you're saying she bribed people but she must have bribed an awful lot of people for that to go either unnoticed or unchallenged for for for how long uh the case took place around 2012 so it has been going on for about 10 years uh and I'm sure the officials knew about that but uh they were just they they just pretended to look the other way because uh her main Patron used to be a very powerful man he was the party chief of hoim Min City and the member of the powerful polit Bureau of the Communist party so he was one of the top 15 or so uh leaders of the country so he was so powerful and he was uh ruling hoimin City like his own fief and he was her main Patron for a long time and uh she had to uh he retired in 2015 and after his retirement uh his associates uh began were began to be persecuted by rival factions and other leaders uh and he was uh also uh sacked from his position even though he already had retired uh so uh and then certainly you know she arrived several uh officials uh in the Inspector General in including the deputy Inspector General of the whole banking system uh uh she bribe them give gave him uh half a billion half a million dollarss and she gave the the Chief Inspector of the the banking uh in system in in the South perhaps uh around $5 million and various other officials okay so this corruption spread far and wide and to the upper reaches uh of the this this one party uh system so now that we have this death penalty explain to us why she was given this death penalty which is not only unusual but it's so for a woman to receive it I understand uh it's within the frame of uh punishment for criminals like uh like her so it's not quite uh it's not unpredicted uh but it's uh I I believe it's going to be commuted uh but uh they want to give her a very uh heavy sentence uh so that she uh is willing to uh give up the information about about her other assets because they they still want to uh recover uh the assets uh many assets from her that they have not been able to so that that's one of the reason why they they they hand out a death sentence for her but it's likely to be commuted later but this is not uh I have to say that this is not the first time that death sentences have been given out uh but all of them if I remember correctly have all been commuted uh in the past so how was she found out in the end given that she had this such a widespread uh network of corruption well basically everyone uh who does business in Vietnam has to try to evade the laws or violate the law in in some ways because the laws are vague and the laws are are meant to serve the officials and not to serve the business or the people so the laws made to serve the the officials the government so whenever the government want to use the law against you they can use it and so uh so it it's very uh it's almost impossible to do any business in Vietnam without violating the law thank you so much and so she has violated the law and the officials knew that but then she was protected by top officials they could not reach her they could not touch her until her Patron retired and that that's when they they they could go after her right uh they should turn that into a film it's fascinating Professor twang Vu from the University of Oregon thank you so much oh thank you very much

Channel: DW News

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Length: 6min 19sec (379 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024