Sixty-seven-year-old, Truong My Lan, a Vietnamese tycoon billionaire has been sentenced to death for draining £22billion from the banking system in Vietnam’s largest ever financial fraud.

In the west for financial fraud you go to jail and will be rehabilitated. But in Vietnam  you pay the ultimate price death.

My Lan  who oversaw a merger  of three cash strapped lenders to form Saigon Commercial Bank in 2011, created a complex network of shell companies that owned most of its shares. She then made numerous false loan applications via the shell companies which came to account for 93 per cent of the SCB’s  customers.  The former market trader prevented the plunder coming to light by bribing officials and appointing trusted associates and cronies to work at the bank.

On one occasion, she ordered her driver to withdraw £ 2.3 billion(108 trillion dong) in cash weighing more than two tons  and store it in her basement.

The losses before her arrest in 2022  amounted to more than three per cent of Vietnam’s GDP. My Lan used the cash and her powerful connections to expand her diverse property empire in the communist country where all land is officially owned by the state.

She was convicted for bribery, embezzlement and violating banking regulations by the People’s Court  of Ho Chi Minh City. In her defence the judges heard it was her first time offence and she had done lots of charity work.

The judges found her guilty of orchestrating a sophisticated criminal enterprise damaging irrevocable consequences’ former Central Bank official Do Thi Nhan was jailed for life for accepting £ 4.1 million in bribes.

My Lan’s downfall was a result of the Blazing Furnace anti-corruption campaign led by Communist Party secretary general Nguyen Phi Tong. She is used SCB as a piggy bank and avoided being caught for decades.