Hello, I'm Regina Vaid and welcome to this hour.
In the past few minutes,
a court in Vietnam has sentenced a wealthy proper developer to death
for defrauding a bank of billions of dollars.
67-year-old Truong My Lan was found guilty
of embezzlement bribing State officials
and violating Bank lending regulations
after she used her hidden ownership of the Saigon Commercial Bank
to channel $44 billion of loans to her own companies.
It's been described
as one of the greatest Brank frauds in history.
Well, for more on this, we can go straight to Bangkok
and join our Southeast Asia
correspondent Jonathan Head.
First of all, Jonathan, if you could just tell us
a little bit more about what the court said today
and the background to this case.
Well the the Court's been giving enormous amounts of detail
about this case.
case uh through its five weeks um so
everyone in Vietnam knows a lot about it
not that's quite unusual there um
they've wanted the public to know about
this case um it is extraordinary the
amounts of money are absolutely stering
we're talking about a significant chunk
of Vietnam's GDP that this woman was
able to siphon off over 11 years of
through these um secretly channeled
loans that went through a whole bunch of
front companies and proxies to her own
companies um the prosecutors believe
that of that 44 billion perhaps 27
billion may never be recovered um that
is a staggering loss and will be very
very tough for the State Bank uh to to
to make up in terms of saving the bank
um really the authorities have sort of
blamed Chong Milan and and and have
talked about the way in which she was
bribing officials and the kind of
sophistication of this this network and
really it it is part of an ongoing
anti-corruption campaign that's been
going for several years led by the
communist authorities who say they're
determined to stamp it out but of course
it does raise a lot of questions which
is how was it that this woman she's very
high-profile she's one of the biggest
property owners in in Vietnam how was
she able to do that for 11 years and of
course officially the authorities say
well she was paying off this person and
that and hiding this and that but it is
extraordinary that it went on for 11
years without being stopped and I think
those questions still hang over whether
the Vietnamese authorities are capable
of reigning in this kind of Fraud and
Jonathan you say that this was a trial
that was followed by so many people in
Vietnam and trong Milan is a well known
property developer in the country but
now she faces the death
penalty that itself is extraordinary
normally the death penalty is not
usually handed down on women but I think
this case was so exceptional in terms of
its scale and the Damage it's done to
Vietnam's finances they probably felt
they needed to make an example of her
they may also be trying to encourage her
to give as much money back as as they
can get her to do this is something the
other um 80 defendants in court today
have largely done they they're all more
minor of course but these are all the
people accused of conspiring with her
including for example a Chief Inspector
of the State Bank who was bribed 5
million dollar according to prosecutors
in order to look the other way they've
all pleaded guilty and offered to bring
back as much money as they can I think
the state believes that TR Milan must
have far more assets that she can return
to the state to try and make up this
massive hole in this bank's finances
okay Jonathan head uh in Bangkok
watching that huge trial in Vietnam and
that verdict for thank you very much and
Jonathan's written an analysis piece on
the BBC News website with more
background to