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Vietnamese tycoon facing death sentence scrambles to repay fraud billions

Truong My Lan’s lawyer said she was securing funds to appeal her life sentence, on top of the US$11 billion she needs to avoid execution

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Truong My Lan attends trial at a court in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in April last year. Photo: VnExpress via AP
Bloomberg
Vietnamese tycoon Truong My Lan was working to pay back hundreds of millions in stolen bank funds as her appeal hearing against a life sentence for charges including money laundering got under way on Tuesday.

Lan – who already faces a death sentence from a separate trial for massive fraud – and her team are 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 (US$585 million) worth of bond proceeds from banks, Thanh said. “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$12.3 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank, Vietnam’s largest-ever fraud case.

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Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for US$12.5 billion fraud

Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for US$12.5 billion fraud
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 prosecutors said amounted to an estimated US$11 billion.
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