The real estate tycoon at the center of a US$12.46 billion fraud case has been sentenced to death, a penalty which appears to have appeased an outraged Vietnamese public but may not be enough to stem rising concerns about the health of the financial system.
Truong My Lan, chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was sentenced to death on April 11 by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court.
The trial gripped the Vietnamese public, not least because the staggering pilfered sums were often delivered in lowly Styrofoam boxes, a common household item often reused to grow pesticide-free “clean” vegetables in Vietnamese…