Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan (C-L) looks on at a court in Ho Chi Minh city on March 25, 2025. The appeal of a Vietnamese property tycoon convicted of money laundering began on March 25, 2025 three months after she lost an appeal against the death penalty in a separate case. (Photo by AFP)
Vietnamese tycoon Truong My Lan (pic) is working to pay back hundreds of millions in stolen bank funds as her appeal hearing against a life sentence for charges including money laundering gets underway.
Lan – who already faces a death sentence from a separate trial for massive fraud – is focusing on securing funds to pay back bondholders, according to her lawyer Giang Hong Thanh. She will then target the payments related to her death sentence.
She has requested that prosecution agencies recover for her more than 15 trillion dong (RM2.59bil) worth of bond proceeds from banks, Thanh said yesterday.
“She is also arranging to sell some assets to pay back the bondholders. She started working on this right after the first trial on the bond case,” he added.
The 68-year-old real estate magnate was sentenced to death last April after being found guilty of embezzling US$12.3bil from Saigon Commercial Bank, Vietnam’s largest-ever fraud case.
Lan lost her appeal against the death penalty in December, but she can avoid execution if she returns at least three-quarters of the total embezzled assets, which amount to an estimated US$11bil (RM48.7bil). — Bloomberg
