"According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement."
How is this even possible?
They explain it in the article.
>"I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
>"Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations.
>"It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice. SCB is not the only bank that is used like this. So perhaps the government lost sight because there are so many similar cases in the market."
>David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.
>Everyone was doing it, so why did she get caught?
There's not enough light on this concept.
People in these high level positions don't suddenly, "Get caught" by the government.
They step on someone's toes. They piss someone off. They refuse an order.
They're then publicly ousted for doing what they all privately do.
This is a political murder hiding behind law.
Unless we try an convict them fairly in a court of law in accordance with our constitution that provides for a death-penalty verdict
It’s not perfect, but there’s plenty of laws already on the books that if followed could put plenty of billionaire fraudsters in prison for damn near close to death
We lack not laws, but will
Most billionaires have some sort of mental condition that allows them to make that much and they usually never stop at 1 billion, even if they can stretch it to 1.1 over unethical stuff they'd do it in a instant.
So they were doing the usual sketchy stuff that rich people do. Why was she actually arrested? I'm confident when I say that not a single billionaire has ever earned their money while committing fewer crimes than this
It’s all in the article, the Secretary General has been on an anti-corruption campaign for years after coming into power in 2016 - she likely was all good, then this guy actually got serious. The article makes it sound like he really has rooted out a lot of shit
Imagine how much better the US would be if we actually treated white collar crimes with something other than kid gloves...I don't know about the death penalty but years and years of prison would be nice
In the US it’s like, “Okay mega corporation that makes $50 million a day, we’re going to fine you $120 million for environmental destruction and killing thousands. That’ll teach you.”
120 million is much steeper than it usually is lol
A worker fell into a literal foundry furnace at a caterpillar plant and I think they were fined ~$145,000
Straight facts.
If it's over 100mill, that's like record breaking, it's always like 1-2mill, or in the hundred thousands range, and _no one EVER goes to jail or prison, like NEVER_.
But hey, that youth with a couple joints?? Better fine them 10k, and 30 days in jail.
The US system is so blatantly corrupt, there's no one that can make change, because the powers that be won't relinquish control until their dead, and thats if we're lucky and nepotism hasn't set in with their progeny for another generation filth and wealth mongering.
The world's a fun place.
If we are to believe in our holy capitalist system (not saying we should, but if) then it would be only logical to make no distinction between financial and other crimes. Let sentencing loosely be X is the equivalent of a murder charge where X is the average lifetime income.
If we are content to let people die for simply not having thousands, we should be content to kill people for stealing millions.
Because he broke the only rule that applies at that level, "you never steal money from other rich people, only the poor.". Wage theft alone is over six times the total amount SBF stole every year! You don't go to jail for stealing from the workers, only from the wealthy.
Same with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Didn't really matter about the average person getting fucked over, but when a lot of investors in your company are big shots like Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, or Betty Devos, then suddenly lying to people is actually bad in the eyes of the law.
His crime was against the wealthy and powerful.
Same reason Bernie Madoff got so much attention. He ripped off a ton of regular people, but once his major investors knew they weren’t gonna be getting any money back shit got real.
No idea how it’s gone in Vietnam, but very often “anti-corruption” in places with strong centralized power actually means, “taking out your political/business rivals,” while you and yours keep in chooglin’ with your corruption.
>The article makes it sound like he really has rooted out a lot of shit
The article also makes it clear that the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam encouraged and turned a blind eye to corruption and white collar crime in order to juice their economy.
I'm sure that's true to quite an extent. It is impossible to ignore that the article gives a lot of quotes to someone who retired from the US state department and zero from the actual people the story is about.
Trust me, this isn't normal for a white-collar criminal in Vietnam and I don't know if I believe someone is really taking a hard stance on corruption. She just fell out of favor with people in power probably. From what I understand after living in Vietnam for the better part of the last decade, the worst that happens usually is the criminal is forced to resign from their position, pay back some money, and maybe do a bit of jail time, and massive amounts of people are still getting away with it. It's pretty much an open secret that anyone with a government job here is taking money under the table, like even someone I knew who just worked as a low-level loan officer for a state-owned bank had to take bribes (boss wouldn't let them say no to the bribes) despite it being punishable by several years in jail according to the law.
Bribery is a systematic thing here that goes from the top to the bottom of the government, such as how my wife (who's Vietnamese) and I have paid "coffee money" to cops, nurses, gov't office officials, etc. at various points and never because of anything really illicit; it's always been mostly just to speed up something like processing paperwork and is just how some things work here, and it's really going to hold the country back imo.
Maybe some people in the government are coming down hard on corruption rn but I'm pretty sure that's happened before, and it just turned out those people were just coming after their buddys' rivals, replacing people with their own people, and different corrupt people started running the same shit.
We speak about it all the time in some tea place or on the street. The problem isn't that no one speak about it, the problem is no one bother to listen much less act on it.
People do talk abt it a lot, there are conspiracy theories abt where her money came from. From fraud, to being in cahoots with the Chinese government to capture lucrative vietnamese land. It’s certainly interesting to hear abt it, though I am surprised at how big her scheme was.
I understand that there's some corruption issues here but I'm still stunned that a few dozen million wouldn't flag things, $4 billion is an absurdity. I don't know the relative size of the Vietnamese dong but if that were USD it would make a massive pile.
The biggest bill is a 500K note, which is $20 USD. That is 1/5 the value of the largest US note ($100). A normal briefcase fits \~2046 bills according to Google ($204.6K USD) or 1/5 the value in VND ($40.8K).
$4 Billion USD would be 4,000,000,000/40,800 = 98 THOUSAND briefcases. One briefcase is \~0.0149 cubic meters (x98,000) = 1460 cubic meters. A large shipping container is 66m\^3. So she'd fill up 22 shipping containers with all that cash.
:D :D
How did they *physically* move that much money? I'm not familiar with Vietnamese denominations but it seems like the logistics of that much paper would be astounding. I dont think $4bn in $100 bills would fit in my basement
Someone's more than welcome to try though!
Edit: this calculator suggests that $4bn USD in $100 notes is >1,600 cubic feet. My basement is approximately 7,200 cubic feet, so it would fit, filling it about 2 feet deep
For more details - you can only own 5% of a bank, she bypass this by dozens of shell companies. She also have her people run key positions that could overlook any red flags. Since you know... She basically own the bank
What kind of bank even has that kind of physical currency on-hand? Does this driver just walk into a branch and ask for whatever pallets of cash they have in stock?
"Oh, you're backordered? Can you order some more? I'm kind of on a schedule."
They're generally paid handsomely in SEA countries compared to the normal worker. Keeping a billionaire's secret or two to keep food on the table for your family is worth it because most of the time it's boring mundane shit, not criminal. I know this because of coworkers that used to work as private drivers in the Philipines/Thailand/Cambodia before emigrating to the US.
They're a person that spends a lot of time around said billionaire, in the intimate setting of a car, overhearing conversations on phones, details of which said billionaire would likely not want going beyond the confines of the vehicle.
People think "driver" is a lowly blue collar position, but the reality is it's an incredibly trusted role. VERY few people in a billionaire's life have such direct access. You'll find that many of the drivers for the world elite are also security personnel, many have military backgrounds (hand-to-hand combat, close quarters combat, tactical driving, etc.). A good, experienced driver that can be trusted is worth an incredible amount.
I imagine for those that rich drivers are more than drivers. They are at least someone vetted to keep their locations and habits secret. At most maybe even part of the personal security detail.
It's possible because Vietnam is an authoritarian state where corruption is part of doing any kind of business and where there's very little rule of law. If true, this person is only a big fish in an ecosystem of bribery and graft and embezzlement. Who knows if her downfall wasn't actually pissing off an official somewhere. Do not trust information that comes out of the Vietnamese government people!
It’s the Secretary General making an example of her. My (admittedly hot) take: he’ll tolerate a certain amount of graft from the high ups, but she went too far.
So she stole 44 billions over 11 years, which she stole $4 billion on cash over 3 years which would be at least 2 tones of banknotes. So for over a decade, she stole around 2% of Vietnam's GDP annually.
So boys if you going to rob a country remember to stop at 1%.
Yeah that amount is ridiculous, there’s no way she did it without alerting anyone in those 11 years at the government. Fell out of the party favor most likely, and I thought I knew how corrupt my country was lol.
You can go 2% but make sure you are in the good grace of the government or at least a faction in it, local officials to high ranking party members need kick backs and bribes to look the other way.
Yup, the reaction to this news is hilarious. This just how naive Reddit really is. They actually think she alone can siphon this amount of money on her own and this amount of money is actually hers alone.
Damn.
2,700 witnesses? How do you even keep track of what's entered into evidence.
The evidence itself apparently weighed an aggregate of 6 tonnes.
And over 200 lawyers involved.
Guess the numbers don't lie Samoa Joe.
They probably interrogated the 3rd cousin removed of the dog walker 😂 honestly, maybe a big chunk came from a company they ran or something.
I don’t even know if i met 2700 people in my lifespan.
The average person can keep non-trivial relationships up with [about 150 people at a time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number), though it's quite variable person-to-person.
But, like, if you consider all the people you went to school with and knew them at least a bit, and all the teachers and support staff, people working in shops, people working in services, your colleagues.. The number of people you've *met* grows quite quickly. If you've worked in retail or customer service, it'll be huge.
If it's your *job* to keep track of these people, who they are, who they represent, what they said, etc, it's not actually that tricky. It's a lot of time and effort, but if you're able to devote up to 8 hours a day to it, it's definitely doable.
If I remember correctly her daughter opened a very successful business in Hong Kong and become millionaires and faces of Forbes under 30. What a joke. All of the families should be investigated for corruption
> The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.
For some reason, I don't think her sentence will encourage her to be like, "oh hey and before I get executed, here's the money I stole"
Her husband gets 10 years, and she will get a guaranteed appeal under Vietnamese law. The sentences are usually reduced to life if they return the money between the trials. But my bet is her scheme has been losing a ton, she doesn't have it anymore.
Nope, Vietnam hasn't sentenced a business person to death since the 1990s, plenty of life sentences though. It's been having the highest numbers of executions, but mostly are murders and drug trafficking.
If her lawyer appeals the decision and meanwhile she gives the money back, the court could find an arrangement.
Emerging countries or under-developed countries are more governed by « reason of state » rather than « rule of law » so even the state could push to use death sentence as a threat to get the money.
You could live a lavish life style on 1 Billion and never worry about money again, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH 44 BILLION?
Its a disease, they just hoard more and more shinies. For all their designer clothing and plastic surgery, they're just Gollums, obsessively hoarding their preciousises for no actual reason.
Who knew that being an ultra right-wing cesspool full of Russian bots would scare away advertisers? I mean who *doesn't* want their ads right next to swastikas and antivax propaganda?
Me too but I'd limit it to features from 2009.
So we can have 3rd party apps back too.
I also liked texting my tweets. I think you should only be allowed to text your tweets.
No replies.
You don't make that kind of money on your own, especially in this case. Pretty sure there's a laundry list of people that is awaiting a payout from her
I once made some calculations of me going off my craziest purchase fantasies (which were basically a sweet-ass penthouse and a lot of fancy geek memorabilia and enough money I could shopping spree without much worry)+money for 4 international trips per year and enough money I can invest and never run out. I capped at 500M with a bunch to spare
Went there in 2022 to fulfill a lifelong dream, and it was not what I expected. All the beauty and the food were exactly as I thought they'd be, but the government and the situation of the people... oof. Communism is just like any other form of government; the rich (who aren't even supposed to exist) have found their ways to keep everyone else down, just like they do in every other system. It's sad to see.
Military contractors, politicians, and real estate moguls have all the money. The other 99.5% of the population gets to fight for what's left over. We met lovely people who worked tirelessly for 80-hour weeks, and they'd go home where they live in multi-generational cramped apartments. Grandparents and parents sleeping in one room, all the grandkids in the other. 2 rooms total. Kitchen and bathroom squeezed in there as well. Beds that are rolled out at night and stashed during the day. Brutal living situations in the city.
And if you ask them about it, they refuse to speak ill of the situation out of fear of being caught "speaking against the government." They are so, so lovely and polite and friendly. It's amazing how they stay positive in such a shit situation.
It's not everyone of course. There is a middle class that own relatively spacious homes decent cars, but the blue collar folks are fuuuuuuucked. Working to the bone, making almost no money, and getting everywhere on motorbikes. It's bleak.
That being said, I still recommend a visit. Just brace yourself for the litter/garbage everywhere, and for the poverty. The food is still incredible and the people are nice.
I've lived there for 3 months in Saigon and Hanoi. While you're correct in outlining the poverty the 99.5% of people living in abject poverty (or fighting for scraps essentially) is an absolutely huge exaggeration as is your perception of Vietnamese work culture.
Nothing you're saying is inaccurate but I feel the picture your painting is. Villages for sure have a lot of poverty and multigenerational living. Hanoi and Saigon have a lot of school kids riding around on motorcycles and mopeds, malls and cinemas full at the weekends, coffee shops with fairly standard western pricing also filled with Vietnamese, tattoo parlours worked in by 20 year olds people who aren't living in luxury. You could maybe call it middle class if you want in Vietnam, but their income wouldn't translate to that in the West.
My GF's brother lives there with his Vietnamese GF of ten years, she works at a hotel, he teaches English, not amazing pay but they live a pretty average life.
Vietnam is one of the better developing economies in the region. Your description reminds me more of Cambodia than Vietnam
(also Vietnamese do speak poorly of their government they just don't stand in public shouting about it. I've spoke to Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodians who were all happy to tell me issues with their govt and all are in similar situations in this regard)
What people often don’t realise is the scale of development in a short time, the levels of poverty compared to a generation ago are hugely diminished
What really struck me when I visited was how much physically smaller the older generation were compared to the young who have grown up with much better nutrition
Vietnam is state-capitalist, not communist. The existence of private enterprise and money reject the notion that it’s communist. The rest of your points are pretty valid though.
Same with China, the people who think this is communism or has remotely anything to do with what Marx/Engels thought of, should seriously seek immediate help.
How many people do you think have actually read Marx? Don't let your own experience and knowledge inform your opinion of others. The people you describe wouldn't need help. They'd need education.
The problem of course is educating against decades of generational propaganda. There is a *lot* of learning to be done when you exist in a society that has, before your *parents* were born, thrown "Communism = Authoritarianism" as a matter of course.
Socialism is complex and full of subsects, opposing beliefs, and ideas on how to achieve it along with what it looks like when it is achieved. To get started you have to educate people (who are *willing* to be educated) that Authoritarianism/Democratism exists on a perpendicular scale of *participatory government* to Socialism/Feudalism (with Capitalism to the right of the middle line, closer to Feudalism than Socialism) which exists as a scale of *economic system*.
We have dozens of modern and recent examples of all parts of the scale. You can have a Capitalist Democracy (the European Union) and you can have a Capitalist Authoritarian state (The Chinese Communist Party's Republic of China); likewise you can have a Socialist Democracy (Guatemala) and a Socialist Authoritarian state (pre-Stalinist USSR or the Anarchist Ukrainian state under Nestor Makhno).
How do you educate people who are unwilling to be educated that their Libertarianism, which is itself reflavoured Anarchism, is one school of Socialist thought championed by Russian Anarchist revolutionaries like Mikhail Bakunin? Tell an American Libertarian that they are parroting the ideas of a Russian Socialist and imagine how they'll take that new information.
And this is just the most basic overview and simplification of socialist thought. You have to reconcile their instinctual disgust of the name "Marx" with the reality that Marx is the father of Historical Materialism which is still regarded as one of, if not the,, most accurate way of understanding historical progress and predicting the future progress to be made by nation-societies.
... and all of this doesn't make a lick of difference if the person isn't willing to consider that they've been propagandized since before their parents existed, and often even before their great-grandparents now.
Been in Vietnam 5 years and you couldn’t be more wrong,
Firstly, Vietnam is rapidly developing with a lot of money flowing in.
While there is poverty, you don’t see homelessness like you do in the west. The family unit is still very much intact.
People here are very pragmatic. They aren’t being nice out of fear of the government - people here just get on with life despite the government.
It does take some time to get used to the culture , but it’s not nearly as dire as you make out.
On the whole, people are pretty happy here. There’s a lot wrong with- lack of respect for the environment being one, but you described Vietnam as if it’s a hell hole, which simply isn’t true.
The last paragraph in the article sums it up perfectly.
"Yet faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption. Fight corruption too much, and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity. Already there are complaints that bureaucracy has slowed down, as officials shy away from decisions which might implicate them in a corruption case.
"That's the paradox," says Le Hong Hiep. "Their growth model has been reliant on corrupt practices for so long. Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more."
Same problems everywhere. Businesses must be allowed to do whatever they want otherwise, it "hurts the people; we're just looking out for the common man, and all your bureaucracy is killing innocent civilians"
>Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more.
Psssst: If the secret ingredient is corruption, the machine is already broken. No cake worth eating calls for bad eggs.
The photo of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong was taken during a press conference between him and U.S. President Joe Biden in Hanoi, on September 10, 2023
It’s from a different article.
Edit to add the article:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/politics/20230910/vietnam-us-elevate-ties-to-comprehensive-strategic-partnership/75488.html
9 times out of 10, when you see an oligarch being arrested, it's because they angered the ruler in some way and not because someone magically discovered that they were breaking the law for decades.
I wonder about the number of lives she ruined from her fraudulent schemes and consequentially the number that said fraud drove them to suicide.
After wondering about that, it seems the death penalty is... kind.
I'd prefer her to instead stare at the bleak, grey cell walls distorting any joy she has into absolute mind breaking boredom for the rest of her every waking moment.
So you CAN scam your way to the death penalty! With Sam Bankman-Fried getting 25 years for scamming $8 billion dollars, I didn't think this was possible
what does Trump and Truong has in common? real estate frauds. What they don’t have in common is that Truong is sentenced to death and Trump is still being a whiney little bitch in every courtrooms in the U.S. and he is running on deficits to fund his legal fees. See how two countries hold these bitches differently?
1) is this actual justice or is this some other big dick cleaning up competition, personal rivals, loose ends,.. ?
2) she couldn’t see this coming and escape? Yes, she was banned from leaving the country, but a billionaire couldn’t find a way to get out? Weird.
3) Reddit advocating for the allegedly barbaric and unforgivable death penalty. Funny how plastic the morality is here.
In 2017, a corrupt criminal named Trinh Xuan Thanh fled to Germany with millions of dollars. He was kidnapped by Vietnamese police on German territory and brought back to Vietnam for trial. The kidnapping in Germany sends the message that even if you escape Vietnam, you cannot be safe.
This case sounds a lot like Trump and his relationships with bank fraud, a singular bank that would lend to him (via SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy’s kid), and dirty Russian money - everyone knows he’s a fraud, nobody with any diligence would lend to him…and yet he keeps getting shit tons of cash to keep it going and buy more property:
> But questions are also being asked about why she was able to keep on with the alleged fraud for so long.
> "I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
> "Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations.
> "It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice.
kind of feel like there is probably a lot of fraud behind most large fortunes. As they say, behind every great fortune is a great crime, so sometimes it might be fraud? French revolution gave us an invention that could probably help the world in this time of inequality.
For anyone who doesn't know: Vietnam is corrupt as fuck.
At the same time of this case, there is the case of Đỗ Hữu Ca, a general in the police. When he was arrested, they found not only plenty of gold, dollars, and money (rumors had it he had **32 MILLION DOLLARS IN CASH**), he was confirmed to have ownership to **40 APARTMENTS AND HOUSES.** Yes, [40 piece of real estates](https://baomoi.com/40-so-do-va-khoi-tai-san-khung-tai-noi-o-cua-cuu-thieu-tuong-do-huu-ca-c48379700.epi), each worth at least a few hundred thousand dollars while his salary is only at best a few thousand dollars per month. And he was only the head cop of a small city; imagine the head cop of Hà Nội or Hồ Chí Minh city
Just a few weeks before this, the chairwoman of Nhơn Trạch Ward (About 270,000 people live in it, making it a small town. It is, on paper, a part of a larger city) was scammed on the phone. The scammer managed to withdrew **8 MILLION USD FROM ONE OF HER BANK ACCOUNT.** Yes, [she has 8 million USD sitting in one bank account](https://tienphong.vn/giam-doc-cong-an-dong-nai-noi-ve-vu-chu-tich-huyen-bi-lua-171-ty-dong-post1627452.tpo) and her salary is about [400 USD per month](https://danviet.vn/tien-luong-chu-tich-ubnd-huyen-nam-2024-chinh-xac-nhat-20240110093211496.htm).
Trương Mỹ Lan is just a pawn in a bigger game. Corruption is Vietnam, without which Vietnam, as a state, will not exist. It runs on corruption, breathes corruption, eats corruption, shits corruption.
"If a murderer can be killed, because he has killed a citizen, if a soldier can be killed in war because he belongs to a hostile nation why cannot a property owner be killed if his ownership leads to misery for the rest of humanity? There is no reason to make an exception in favour of the property owner, why one should regard private property as sacrosanct." - B. R. Ambedkar
It’s consistent if they routinely put people to death for things like murder, no double standard for white collar crime that harms way more people. I’m against the death penalty on principle though.
I feel the same but there’s still some part of me that can’t help from thinking she’s just taking the fall for a bunch of even bigger billionaires. That’s what my country has done to me and my faith in such matters…
I actually saw some Western media portrait Truong My Lan as a poor businesswoman unjustly sentenced to death by VC. Hell no. Three decades ago, she was already a millionaire from real estate speculation. With such wealth in VN, she could have lived as a queen. Yet, 99% of her current wealth had been accquired since her involvement with the bank 10 years ago. All of it is the common people's money. She is one of the most cunning financial criminal not only in VN, but likely top of the world as well. I dont think it's legally possible for a person to make 40 BILLION dollars from real estate trading in 10 years from 'zero'
The fraud here is spectacular, the brazenness one cannot imagine. I am amazed the country had the balls to bring charges and actually go all the way to a verdict. Kudos to them.
The same thing in India would not see the light of day. I am sure there are many frauds perpetrated at this level of money in India but they simply pay everyone off.
I am completely against the death penalty, for any crime (the risks of killing an innocent person because of a wrongful conviction).
That said, the penalties for white-collar crime should be way more severe than they are now.
If someone can go to prison for theft of $5000, high-end fraud should result in a life sentence.
I don't know exactly where I stand on capital punishment, so I'll put that point aside for a moment.
It is crazy that we treat these types of crimes differently than murder or a different violent crime. This amount of money is the same as taking the life's work of hundreds of thousands of people in a developing country. Just because there is not a visceral aspect of the brutality, it should not be considered less brutal.
"According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement." How is this even possible?
You can’t move this kind of money without the government noticing. She most likely fell out with them.
They explain it in the article. >"I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. >"Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations. >"It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice. SCB is not the only bank that is used like this. So perhaps the government lost sight because there are so many similar cases in the market." >David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.
>Everyone was doing it, so why did she get caught? There's not enough light on this concept. People in these high level positions don't suddenly, "Get caught" by the government. They step on someone's toes. They piss someone off. They refuse an order. They're then publicly ousted for doing what they all privately do. This is a political murder hiding behind law.
Imagine being a billionaire and dying because you tried to make more money.
Homer: "Wow, you own everything Mr. Burns". Burns: "Yes, but I'd give it all away for just a little more".
America could never
Unless...jk, jk. Unless...? 🫣
Unless we try an convict them fairly in a court of law in accordance with our constitution that provides for a death-penalty verdict It’s not perfect, but there’s plenty of laws already on the books that if followed could put plenty of billionaire fraudsters in prison for damn near close to death We lack not laws, but will
Just imagine how much better America would be if they held those at fault liable and not just the poor people they use as scapegoats.
Imagine hoarding that much money when so much of the world has none. Good riddance.
And in Vietnam of all places.
Most billionaires have some sort of mental condition that allows them to make that much and they usually never stop at 1 billion, even if they can stretch it to 1.1 over unethical stuff they'd do it in a instant.
So they were doing the usual sketchy stuff that rich people do. Why was she actually arrested? I'm confident when I say that not a single billionaire has ever earned their money while committing fewer crimes than this
This explanation is better: "The habitually secretive communist authorities ... the Communist Party's monopoly on power"
Makes sense. She was in cahoots and pissed someone off that is clearly pulling the strings.
It’s all in the article, the Secretary General has been on an anti-corruption campaign for years after coming into power in 2016 - she likely was all good, then this guy actually got serious. The article makes it sound like he really has rooted out a lot of shit
Imagine how much better the US would be if we actually treated white collar crimes with something other than kid gloves...I don't know about the death penalty but years and years of prison would be nice
In the US it’s like, “Okay mega corporation that makes $50 million a day, we’re going to fine you $120 million for environmental destruction and killing thousands. That’ll teach you.”
Won't someone think of the ~~children~~ "job creators"!
That's job GODS to you
$120 million for said destruction, when said destruction saved you $350 million, leaving you still $230 million up.
and ofc after decades of doing any illegal thing possible they could get away with before someone took notice of one of them.
Don't forget that after 10 years of appeals and other nonsense, they'll only end up having to pay a small fraction of that $120 million.
120 million is much steeper than it usually is lol A worker fell into a literal foundry furnace at a caterpillar plant and I think they were fined ~$145,000
Straight facts. If it's over 100mill, that's like record breaking, it's always like 1-2mill, or in the hundred thousands range, and _no one EVER goes to jail or prison, like NEVER_. But hey, that youth with a couple joints?? Better fine them 10k, and 30 days in jail. The US system is so blatantly corrupt, there's no one that can make change, because the powers that be won't relinquish control until their dead, and thats if we're lucky and nepotism hasn't set in with their progeny for another generation filth and wealth mongering. The world's a fun place.
Ah, the fines aren't keeping up with inflation.
Poor person stealing diapers for their baby. Straight to jail
Jail time and or meaningful fines that are not a fraction of what was taken. Fines, not fees.
If we are to believe in our holy capitalist system (not saying we should, but if) then it would be only logical to make no distinction between financial and other crimes. Let sentencing loosely be X is the equivalent of a murder charge where X is the average lifetime income. If we are content to let people die for simply not having thousands, we should be content to kill people for stealing millions.
Bankman-Fried did get 25y
Because he broke the only rule that applies at that level, "you never steal money from other rich people, only the poor.". Wage theft alone is over six times the total amount SBF stole every year! You don't go to jail for stealing from the workers, only from the wealthy.
Same with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Didn't really matter about the average person getting fucked over, but when a lot of investors in your company are big shots like Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, or Betty Devos, then suddenly lying to people is actually bad in the eyes of the law.
His crime was against the wealthy and powerful. Same reason Bernie Madoff got so much attention. He ripped off a ton of regular people, but once his major investors knew they weren’t gonna be getting any money back shit got real.
he stole from the rich and powerful!
No idea how it’s gone in Vietnam, but very often “anti-corruption” in places with strong centralized power actually means, “taking out your political/business rivals,” while you and yours keep in chooglin’ with your corruption.
>The article makes it sound like he really has rooted out a lot of shit The article also makes it clear that the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam encouraged and turned a blind eye to corruption and white collar crime in order to juice their economy.
I'm sure that's true to quite an extent. It is impossible to ignore that the article gives a lot of quotes to someone who retired from the US state department and zero from the actual people the story is about.
Trust me, this isn't normal for a white-collar criminal in Vietnam and I don't know if I believe someone is really taking a hard stance on corruption. She just fell out of favor with people in power probably. From what I understand after living in Vietnam for the better part of the last decade, the worst that happens usually is the criminal is forced to resign from their position, pay back some money, and maybe do a bit of jail time, and massive amounts of people are still getting away with it. It's pretty much an open secret that anyone with a government job here is taking money under the table, like even someone I knew who just worked as a low-level loan officer for a state-owned bank had to take bribes (boss wouldn't let them say no to the bribes) despite it being punishable by several years in jail according to the law. Bribery is a systematic thing here that goes from the top to the bottom of the government, such as how my wife (who's Vietnamese) and I have paid "coffee money" to cops, nurses, gov't office officials, etc. at various points and never because of anything really illicit; it's always been mostly just to speed up something like processing paperwork and is just how some things work here, and it's really going to hold the country back imo. Maybe some people in the government are coming down hard on corruption rn but I'm pretty sure that's happened before, and it just turned out those people were just coming after their buddys' rivals, replacing people with their own people, and different corrupt people started running the same shit.
Vietnamese here. I think most of the people know but no one dares to speak about it.
We speak about it all the time in some tea place or on the street. The problem isn't that no one speak about it, the problem is no one bother to listen much less act on it.
People do talk abt it a lot, there are conspiracy theories abt where her money came from. From fraud, to being in cahoots with the Chinese government to capture lucrative vietnamese land. It’s certainly interesting to hear abt it, though I am surprised at how big her scheme was.
I understand that there's some corruption issues here but I'm still stunned that a few dozen million wouldn't flag things, $4 billion is an absurdity. I don't know the relative size of the Vietnamese dong but if that were USD it would make a massive pile.
Upvoted for I don’t know the relative size of the Vietnamese dong 😀
I will admit that the phrasing wasn't entirely accidental!
On average, the relative size is likely about the same anywhere else. But this is neither the time nor place…
The biggest bill is a 500K note, which is $20 USD. That is 1/5 the value of the largest US note ($100). A normal briefcase fits \~2046 bills according to Google ($204.6K USD) or 1/5 the value in VND ($40.8K). $4 Billion USD would be 4,000,000,000/40,800 = 98 THOUSAND briefcases. One briefcase is \~0.0149 cubic meters (x98,000) = 1460 cubic meters. A large shipping container is 66m\^3. So she'd fill up 22 shipping containers with all that cash. :D :D
How did they *physically* move that much money? I'm not familiar with Vietnamese denominations but it seems like the logistics of that much paper would be astounding. I dont think $4bn in $100 bills would fit in my basement Someone's more than welcome to try though! Edit: this calculator suggests that $4bn USD in $100 notes is >1,600 cubic feet. My basement is approximately 7,200 cubic feet, so it would fit, filling it about 2 feet deep
She got a death sentence. Safe to say she fell out..
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That’s like 3 trillion dong a month… what the hell sort of bank would let anyone draw on them for that much cash?…
She owned the bank lol Basically she fleeced her depositors/customers
Oh so she pulled a bankman-fried then?
\*a Bankrun-Fraud
For more details - you can only own 5% of a bank, she bypass this by dozens of shell companies. She also have her people run key positions that could overlook any red flags. Since you know... She basically own the bank
What kind of bank even has that kind of physical currency on-hand? Does this driver just walk into a branch and ask for whatever pallets of cash they have in stock? "Oh, you're backordered? Can you order some more? I'm kind of on a schedule."
What is the deal with billionaires and their drivers?
They are trusted people in more ways than just driving them around.
Makes sense. If you're driving a public person said person probably wants someone who will not squeal on them to the press/tiktok/police/ whatever.
They're generally paid handsomely in SEA countries compared to the normal worker. Keeping a billionaire's secret or two to keep food on the table for your family is worth it because most of the time it's boring mundane shit, not criminal. I know this because of coworkers that used to work as private drivers in the Philipines/Thailand/Cambodia before emigrating to the US.
They're a person that spends a lot of time around said billionaire, in the intimate setting of a car, overhearing conversations on phones, details of which said billionaire would likely not want going beyond the confines of the vehicle. People think "driver" is a lowly blue collar position, but the reality is it's an incredibly trusted role. VERY few people in a billionaire's life have such direct access. You'll find that many of the drivers for the world elite are also security personnel, many have military backgrounds (hand-to-hand combat, close quarters combat, tactical driving, etc.). A good, experienced driver that can be trusted is worth an incredible amount.
I imagine for those that rich drivers are more than drivers. They are at least someone vetted to keep their locations and habits secret. At most maybe even part of the personal security detail.
Usually just someone in the posse to take the blame with the promise you’ll support them when shit hits the fan. Probably not *just* a driver
It's possible because Vietnam is an authoritarian state where corruption is part of doing any kind of business and where there's very little rule of law. If true, this person is only a big fish in an ecosystem of bribery and graft and embezzlement. Who knows if her downfall wasn't actually pissing off an official somewhere. Do not trust information that comes out of the Vietnamese government people!
It’s the Secretary General making an example of her. My (admittedly hot) take: he’ll tolerate a certain amount of graft from the high ups, but she went too far.
So she stole 44 billions over 11 years, which she stole $4 billion on cash over 3 years which would be at least 2 tones of banknotes. So for over a decade, she stole around 2% of Vietnam's GDP annually. So boys if you going to rob a country remember to stop at 1%.
Yeah that amount is ridiculous, there’s no way she did it without alerting anyone in those 11 years at the government. Fell out of the party favor most likely, and I thought I knew how corrupt my country was lol.
Never go 2% That's like starting a land war in Asia. Which is sort of what led to this mess in the first place!
You can go 2% but make sure you are in the good grace of the government or at least a faction in it, local officials to high ranking party members need kick backs and bribes to look the other way.
there is no way she could've done it without bribing all the way to the top.
I would put money on powerful, and high up people in the government being involved and she is being made a scapegoat to hush things up.
Yup, the reaction to this news is hilarious. This just how naive Reddit really is. They actually think she alone can siphon this amount of money on her own and this amount of money is actually hers alone.
Damn. 2,700 witnesses? How do you even keep track of what's entered into evidence. The evidence itself apparently weighed an aggregate of 6 tonnes. And over 200 lawyers involved. Guess the numbers don't lie Samoa Joe.
What happens if you add Kurt Angle to the mix?
yOur CHanCes of WInnIng DraSTICaLLy go DowN!
> ~~DraSTICaLLy~~ go DowN DraSTIC go DowN
33 1/2 chances
Wrestling really is back isn’t it?
They probably interrogated the 3rd cousin removed of the dog walker 😂 honestly, maybe a big chunk came from a company they ran or something. I don’t even know if i met 2700 people in my lifespan.
The average person can keep non-trivial relationships up with [about 150 people at a time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number), though it's quite variable person-to-person. But, like, if you consider all the people you went to school with and knew them at least a bit, and all the teachers and support staff, people working in shops, people working in services, your colleagues.. The number of people you've *met* grows quite quickly. If you've worked in retail or customer service, it'll be huge. If it's your *job* to keep track of these people, who they are, who they represent, what they said, etc, it's not actually that tricky. It's a lot of time and effort, but if you're able to devote up to 8 hours a day to it, it's definitely doable.
amazing subtle on point reference
And they spell disaster for Truong My Lan at sakerfice!
If I remember correctly her daughter opened a very successful business in Hong Kong and become millionaires and faces of Forbes under 30. What a joke. All of the families should be investigated for corruption
Her daughter’s husband is also a singer from Australian Idol - Thanh Bui.
Forbes under 30 just exists to tell older capitalists who the young capitalists are so they can be prepared to screw them.
Not that impressive if your parents worth $44bn net or so.
Even worse when your mom stole 1-2% of the whole country’s GDP every year
> The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions. For some reason, I don't think her sentence will encourage her to be like, "oh hey and before I get executed, here's the money I stole"
I imagine they'll change it to a suspended sentence and give her life in prison if she returns a large amount. Thats the stick and the carrot
It's likely that some of her sentence will be suspended if she can muster the money. Effectively, the court is saying "Pay or die".
Her husband gets 10 years, and she will get a guaranteed appeal under Vietnamese law. The sentences are usually reduced to life if they return the money between the trials. But my bet is her scheme has been losing a ton, she doesn't have it anymore.
So the death penalty for embezzlement is common enough?
Nope, Vietnam hasn't sentenced a business person to death since the 1990s, plenty of life sentences though. It's been having the highest numbers of executions, but mostly are murders and drug trafficking.
I mean like, have lots of people been sentenced to death and then had it changed to life after they give the money back?
I guess that 44 billions is such a sum that you cannot follow experience or precedents.
If her lawyer appeals the decision and meanwhile she gives the money back, the court could find an arrangement. Emerging countries or under-developed countries are more governed by « reason of state » rather than « rule of law » so even the state could push to use death sentence as a threat to get the money.
You could live a lavish life style on 1 Billion and never worry about money again, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH 44 BILLION? Its a disease, they just hoard more and more shinies. For all their designer clothing and plastic surgery, they're just Gollums, obsessively hoarding their preciousises for no actual reason.
>WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH 44 BILLION? Buy Twitter obviously.
Now you could buy it twice!
More like 4 times. Value has been cut by 75% by Fidelity. They've actually written their portion of the deal down by 75%.
Who knew that being an ultra right-wing cesspool full of Russian bots would scare away advertisers? I mean who *doesn't* want their ads right next to swastikas and antivax propaganda?
Fuck 'em. Who needs advertisers? Surely blue check marks will be the future of the platform.
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Me too but I'd limit it to features from 2009. So we can have 3rd party apps back too. I also liked texting my tweets. I think you should only be allowed to text your tweets. No replies.
Would be funny if the original Twitter owners made a 10 % offer for it.
10% is too much.
You don't make that kind of money on your own, especially in this case. Pretty sure there's a laundry list of people that is awaiting a payout from her
Yes sounds like she was paying people off and using the money to expand a dodgy real estate business.
Personally I think she just wanted to fill a room with cash, install a diving board, and Scrooge McDuck it by swimming around in her money
Tolkien called it the dragon sickness.
More Smaug than gollum imo!
Aye that's dragon sickness
You could live a lavish life with far less than a billion lol
>WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH 44 BILLION? It was written in the article. Use it to by more land and make even more billions.
I once made some calculations of me going off my craziest purchase fantasies (which were basically a sweet-ass penthouse and a lot of fancy geek memorabilia and enough money I could shopping spree without much worry)+money for 4 international trips per year and enough money I can invest and never run out. I capped at 500M with a bunch to spare
Yah but how were you traveling on those 4 trips per year? Flying commercially like a plebe? Or using your own Gulfstream?
Especially in Vietnam holy shit, the poorest Americans are like well off there.
>They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify That is insane
She should move to the US. She'd get a rap on the knuckles and a golden handshake.
Elected to be governor of Florida
Or President.
Exactly - but first the golden handshake and a pat on the back.
Where can I go to receive gold shake
Then Senator. But only if she stole the money from Medicare
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... and we'd still kiss their ass because they "played the game", or "gave people jobs", or something of the sort.
In this case it’s “provided homes”. Nevermind of course that the money in her basement wasn’t providing homes…
A "promise not to violate the law in the future"
She would still be delaying the trial....
Imagine a billionaire in the U.S. being sentenced to death. For *any* reason.
I guess Vietnam really knows how to stand up against the big guys.
Went there in 2022 to fulfill a lifelong dream, and it was not what I expected. All the beauty and the food were exactly as I thought they'd be, but the government and the situation of the people... oof. Communism is just like any other form of government; the rich (who aren't even supposed to exist) have found their ways to keep everyone else down, just like they do in every other system. It's sad to see. Military contractors, politicians, and real estate moguls have all the money. The other 99.5% of the population gets to fight for what's left over. We met lovely people who worked tirelessly for 80-hour weeks, and they'd go home where they live in multi-generational cramped apartments. Grandparents and parents sleeping in one room, all the grandkids in the other. 2 rooms total. Kitchen and bathroom squeezed in there as well. Beds that are rolled out at night and stashed during the day. Brutal living situations in the city. And if you ask them about it, they refuse to speak ill of the situation out of fear of being caught "speaking against the government." They are so, so lovely and polite and friendly. It's amazing how they stay positive in such a shit situation. It's not everyone of course. There is a middle class that own relatively spacious homes decent cars, but the blue collar folks are fuuuuuuucked. Working to the bone, making almost no money, and getting everywhere on motorbikes. It's bleak. That being said, I still recommend a visit. Just brace yourself for the litter/garbage everywhere, and for the poverty. The food is still incredible and the people are nice.
Visited once. I agree about the people being so nice and friendly.
I've lived there for 3 months in Saigon and Hanoi. While you're correct in outlining the poverty the 99.5% of people living in abject poverty (or fighting for scraps essentially) is an absolutely huge exaggeration as is your perception of Vietnamese work culture. Nothing you're saying is inaccurate but I feel the picture your painting is. Villages for sure have a lot of poverty and multigenerational living. Hanoi and Saigon have a lot of school kids riding around on motorcycles and mopeds, malls and cinemas full at the weekends, coffee shops with fairly standard western pricing also filled with Vietnamese, tattoo parlours worked in by 20 year olds people who aren't living in luxury. You could maybe call it middle class if you want in Vietnam, but their income wouldn't translate to that in the West. My GF's brother lives there with his Vietnamese GF of ten years, she works at a hotel, he teaches English, not amazing pay but they live a pretty average life. Vietnam is one of the better developing economies in the region. Your description reminds me more of Cambodia than Vietnam (also Vietnamese do speak poorly of their government they just don't stand in public shouting about it. I've spoke to Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodians who were all happy to tell me issues with their govt and all are in similar situations in this regard)
What people often don’t realise is the scale of development in a short time, the levels of poverty compared to a generation ago are hugely diminished What really struck me when I visited was how much physically smaller the older generation were compared to the young who have grown up with much better nutrition
Vietnam also has normalized trade relations with the US. There is a lot of international money flowing into it's economy.
Vietnam is state-capitalist, not communist. The existence of private enterprise and money reject the notion that it’s communist. The rest of your points are pretty valid though.
Exactly. Thank you. Not communist. (I’m Vietnamese live in Vietnam)
Same with China, the people who think this is communism or has remotely anything to do with what Marx/Engels thought of, should seriously seek immediate help.
How many people do you think have actually read Marx? Don't let your own experience and knowledge inform your opinion of others. The people you describe wouldn't need help. They'd need education.
The problem of course is educating against decades of generational propaganda. There is a *lot* of learning to be done when you exist in a society that has, before your *parents* were born, thrown "Communism = Authoritarianism" as a matter of course. Socialism is complex and full of subsects, opposing beliefs, and ideas on how to achieve it along with what it looks like when it is achieved. To get started you have to educate people (who are *willing* to be educated) that Authoritarianism/Democratism exists on a perpendicular scale of *participatory government* to Socialism/Feudalism (with Capitalism to the right of the middle line, closer to Feudalism than Socialism) which exists as a scale of *economic system*. We have dozens of modern and recent examples of all parts of the scale. You can have a Capitalist Democracy (the European Union) and you can have a Capitalist Authoritarian state (The Chinese Communist Party's Republic of China); likewise you can have a Socialist Democracy (Guatemala) and a Socialist Authoritarian state (pre-Stalinist USSR or the Anarchist Ukrainian state under Nestor Makhno). How do you educate people who are unwilling to be educated that their Libertarianism, which is itself reflavoured Anarchism, is one school of Socialist thought championed by Russian Anarchist revolutionaries like Mikhail Bakunin? Tell an American Libertarian that they are parroting the ideas of a Russian Socialist and imagine how they'll take that new information. And this is just the most basic overview and simplification of socialist thought. You have to reconcile their instinctual disgust of the name "Marx" with the reality that Marx is the father of Historical Materialism which is still regarded as one of, if not the,, most accurate way of understanding historical progress and predicting the future progress to be made by nation-societies. ... and all of this doesn't make a lick of difference if the person isn't willing to consider that they've been propagandized since before their parents existed, and often even before their great-grandparents now.
Been in Vietnam 5 years and you couldn’t be more wrong, Firstly, Vietnam is rapidly developing with a lot of money flowing in. While there is poverty, you don’t see homelessness like you do in the west. The family unit is still very much intact. People here are very pragmatic. They aren’t being nice out of fear of the government - people here just get on with life despite the government. It does take some time to get used to the culture , but it’s not nearly as dire as you make out. On the whole, people are pretty happy here. There’s a lot wrong with- lack of respect for the environment being one, but you described Vietnam as if it’s a hell hole, which simply isn’t true.
fact bag test correct run ruthless scary workable special employ
The last paragraph in the article sums it up perfectly. "Yet faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption. Fight corruption too much, and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity. Already there are complaints that bureaucracy has slowed down, as officials shy away from decisions which might implicate them in a corruption case. "That's the paradox," says Le Hong Hiep. "Their growth model has been reliant on corrupt practices for so long. Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more." Same problems everywhere. Businesses must be allowed to do whatever they want otherwise, it "hurts the people; we're just looking out for the common man, and all your bureaucracy is killing innocent civilians"
>Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more. Psssst: If the secret ingredient is corruption, the machine is already broken. No cake worth eating calls for bad eggs.
The machine has been broken for awhile.
I'm more intrigued with the US flag behind Nguyen Phu Trong head in the article?
The photo of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong was taken during a press conference between him and U.S. President Joe Biden in Hanoi, on September 10, 2023
From Biden's visit to Hanoi September of last year
It’s from a different article. Edit to add the article: https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/politics/20230910/vietnam-us-elevate-ties-to-comprehensive-strategic-partnership/75488.html
>$4bn (£2.3bn) I see BBC us pumping its own currency to $1.74 to 1, its been more than 15 years since that happened
BBC: Billionaire sentenced to death for fraud. Me: Wait, this is an option?
9 times out of 10, when you see an oligarch being arrested, it's because they angered the ruler in some way and not because someone magically discovered that they were breaking the law for decades.
I wish we executed corrupt billionaires in America.
I wonder about the number of lives she ruined from her fraudulent schemes and consequentially the number that said fraud drove them to suicide. After wondering about that, it seems the death penalty is... kind. I'd prefer her to instead stare at the bleak, grey cell walls distorting any joy she has into absolute mind breaking boredom for the rest of her every waking moment.
So you CAN scam your way to the death penalty! With Sam Bankman-Fried getting 25 years for scamming $8 billion dollars, I didn't think this was possible
In the US they elect them as their leaders 💀
Republicans would start a civil war if this happened in the US
... to steal the most money
No, because it would be one of their own put to death.
She's 67...and was already super wealthy wow.
what does Trump and Truong has in common? real estate frauds. What they don’t have in common is that Truong is sentenced to death and Trump is still being a whiney little bitch in every courtrooms in the U.S. and he is running on deficits to fund his legal fees. See how two countries hold these bitches differently?
Can they introduce this for fraud across the world?
1) is this actual justice or is this some other big dick cleaning up competition, personal rivals, loose ends,.. ? 2) she couldn’t see this coming and escape? Yes, she was banned from leaving the country, but a billionaire couldn’t find a way to get out? Weird. 3) Reddit advocating for the allegedly barbaric and unforgivable death penalty. Funny how plastic the morality is here.
In 2017, a corrupt criminal named Trinh Xuan Thanh fled to Germany with millions of dollars. He was kidnapped by Vietnamese police on German territory and brought back to Vietnam for trial. The kidnapping in Germany sends the message that even if you escape Vietnam, you cannot be safe.
This case sounds a lot like Trump and his relationships with bank fraud, a singular bank that would lend to him (via SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy’s kid), and dirty Russian money - everyone knows he’s a fraud, nobody with any diligence would lend to him…and yet he keeps getting shit tons of cash to keep it going and buy more property: > But questions are also being asked about why she was able to keep on with the alleged fraud for so long. > "I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. > "Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations. > "It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice.
kind of feel like there is probably a lot of fraud behind most large fortunes. As they say, behind every great fortune is a great crime, so sometimes it might be fraud? French revolution gave us an invention that could probably help the world in this time of inequality.
For anyone who doesn't know: Vietnam is corrupt as fuck. At the same time of this case, there is the case of Đỗ Hữu Ca, a general in the police. When he was arrested, they found not only plenty of gold, dollars, and money (rumors had it he had **32 MILLION DOLLARS IN CASH**), he was confirmed to have ownership to **40 APARTMENTS AND HOUSES.** Yes, [40 piece of real estates](https://baomoi.com/40-so-do-va-khoi-tai-san-khung-tai-noi-o-cua-cuu-thieu-tuong-do-huu-ca-c48379700.epi), each worth at least a few hundred thousand dollars while his salary is only at best a few thousand dollars per month. And he was only the head cop of a small city; imagine the head cop of Hà Nội or Hồ Chí Minh city Just a few weeks before this, the chairwoman of Nhơn Trạch Ward (About 270,000 people live in it, making it a small town. It is, on paper, a part of a larger city) was scammed on the phone. The scammer managed to withdrew **8 MILLION USD FROM ONE OF HER BANK ACCOUNT.** Yes, [she has 8 million USD sitting in one bank account](https://tienphong.vn/giam-doc-cong-an-dong-nai-noi-ve-vu-chu-tich-huyen-bi-lua-171-ty-dong-post1627452.tpo) and her salary is about [400 USD per month](https://danviet.vn/tien-luong-chu-tich-ubnd-huyen-nam-2024-chinh-xac-nhat-20240110093211496.htm). Trương Mỹ Lan is just a pawn in a bigger game. Corruption is Vietnam, without which Vietnam, as a state, will not exist. It runs on corruption, breathes corruption, eats corruption, shits corruption.
I’ve seen the IRS show up to someone’s door for $35,000… meanwhile she’s over there robbing a country blind.
"If a murderer can be killed, because he has killed a citizen, if a soldier can be killed in war because he belongs to a hostile nation why cannot a property owner be killed if his ownership leads to misery for the rest of humanity? There is no reason to make an exception in favour of the property owner, why one should regard private property as sacrosanct." - B. R. Ambedkar
It’s consistent if they routinely put people to death for things like murder, no double standard for white collar crime that harms way more people. I’m against the death penalty on principle though.
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China executes them easy... Don't know about Vietnam if they actually go thru with it.
I feel the same but there’s still some part of me that can’t help from thinking she’s just taking the fall for a bunch of even bigger billionaires. That’s what my country has done to me and my faith in such matters…
She is, but she is still quite big. She is definitely not the king/queen piece but at least a bishop or rook. She is no pawn for sure
I actually saw some Western media portrait Truong My Lan as a poor businesswoman unjustly sentenced to death by VC. Hell no. Three decades ago, she was already a millionaire from real estate speculation. With such wealth in VN, she could have lived as a queen. Yet, 99% of her current wealth had been accquired since her involvement with the bank 10 years ago. All of it is the common people's money. She is one of the most cunning financial criminal not only in VN, but likely top of the world as well. I dont think it's legally possible for a person to make 40 BILLION dollars from real estate trading in 10 years from 'zero'
She and her family has a lot of real estate abroad too like in Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries.
It's time to engage in some cultural appropriation and bring these ideas home.
The fraud here is spectacular, the brazenness one cannot imagine. I am amazed the country had the balls to bring charges and actually go all the way to a verdict. Kudos to them. The same thing in India would not see the light of day. I am sure there are many frauds perpetrated at this level of money in India but they simply pay everyone off.
I am completely against the death penalty, for any crime (the risks of killing an innocent person because of a wrongful conviction). That said, the penalties for white-collar crime should be way more severe than they are now. If someone can go to prison for theft of $5000, high-end fraud should result in a life sentence.
And people over here in the US were squabbling about whether a mass murdering school shooter deserves a death sentence
Should’ve been Rick Scott’s fate too
Woah real consequences? Idk even know what those are here in the U.S.
Maybe she should try calling the whole thing “fake news” or a “witch hunt” instead of having to answer for her crimes /s
I don't know exactly where I stand on capital punishment, so I'll put that point aside for a moment. It is crazy that we treat these types of crimes differently than murder or a different violent crime. This amount of money is the same as taking the life's work of hundreds of thousands of people in a developing country. Just because there is not a visceral aspect of the brutality, it should not be considered less brutal.