Vietnamese real estate tycoon, already sentenced to death for fraud, faces trial on new charges

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The second trial for Vietnamese real estate typcoon Truong My Lan — who was sentenced to death for financial fraud in April — started on Thursday, state media reported.

The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was convicted for orchestrating Vietnam’s biggest ever financial fraud case, amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP and for illegally controlling a major bank allowing loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion, state media said.

Her arrest and conviction was one of the highest profile cases in an anti-corruption drive that has intensified since 2022. The so-called blazing furnace campaign has also singed the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics and led to the resignation of a former president who was implicated in it.

Lan is being tried on fresh charges of appropriating property fraudulently and money laundering. According to a police investigation, she raised $1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, state media reports say.

Investigators found 21 companies controlled by Lan’s Van Thinh Phat that illegally transferred over $4.5 billion in and out of Vietnam between 2012-2022.

She is also accused of siphoning off $18 billion obtained through fraud.

The case also involves 33 other defendants. It is expected to last a month.

Lan and her family established the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shifted from a state-run economy to a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreign investors. She started out helping her mother, a Chinese entrepreneur, sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to the state media outlet Tien Phong.

Van Thinh Phat became one of