Truong My Lan: Vietnamese tycoon in a race to repay $9 billion to avoid execution

Property tycoon Truong My Lan was one of Vietnam’s richest businesswomen. She amassed an eye-wateringly valuable portfolio of luxury homes, hotels and commercial properties all over the country and abroad – allegedly by effectively turning a major bank into her own personal ATM.

On Tuesday, the 68-year-old lost her appeal against the death sentence for masterminding one of the biggest frauds in global history, in which billions vanished from Vietnam’s financial system.

She had been put on death row by a Ho Chi Minh City court in April for embezzling more than $12 billion – an amount equivalent to roughly 3% of Vietnam’s entire economy. The scale of the fraud rattled confidence in an economy which hopes to woo foreign investors away from competitors such as neighboring China, which could find itself hobbled by US tariffs under the second Donald Trump administration.

There is, however, a small glimmer of a reprieve for Lan – if she can afford it.
Her death sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment if she repays three-quarters of what she earned via the fraud, judges said in their ruling, state-run VnExpress International reported.
So, can she find $9 billion to spare, to save her life?

Born to a modest Sino-Vietnamese family in 1956, Lan started out selling cosmetics with her mother at Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to local and state media reports.

She steadily grew small businesses, but her wealth skyrocketed after she met Hong Kong investor Eric Chu. She set up real-estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the year she married Chu.

By 2011, Lan was already a powerful yet low-profile business figure in Ho Chi Minh City. That year, she became involved in the merger of the struggling Saigon Joint Commercial Bank with two other lenders, in a deal coordinated by Vietnam’s central bank.

She was well on her way to riches, high status and, eventually, infamy.

More than a decade later, the manipulation of the banking system came to the fore when Vietnam’s property bubble burst and bad loans started stacking up as multiple Lan-linked businesses suffered financially during the Covid-19 pandemic, Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at the Vietnam Studies Programme of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, told CNN.

Lan’s arrest in October 2022 sparked a week-long run on Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), then the nation’s fifth-largest lender, over suspicions of its ties with Lan’s alleged financial crimes.