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Hello, I'm Regina Vaid and welcome to this hour.

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In the past few minutes,

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a court in Vietnam has sentenced a wealthy proper developer to death

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for defrauding a bank of billions of dollars.

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67-year-old Truong My Lan was found guilty

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of embezzlement bribing State officials

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and violating Bank lending regulations

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after she used her hidden ownership of the Saigon Commercial Bank

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to channel $44 billion of loans to her own companies.

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It's been described

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as one of the greatest Brank frauds in history.

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Well, for more on this, we can go straight to Bangkok

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and join our Southeast Asia

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correspondent Jonathan Head.

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First of all, Jonathan, if you could just tell us

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a little bit more about what the court said today

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and the background to this case.

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Well the the Court's been giving enormous amounts of detail

NOTE Paragraph

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about this case.

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case uh through its five weeks um so

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everyone in Vietnam knows a lot about it

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not that's quite unusual there um

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they've wanted the public to know about

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this case um it is extraordinary the

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amounts of money are absolutely stering

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we're talking about a significant chunk

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of Vietnam's GDP that this woman was

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able to siphon off over 11 years of

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through these um secretly channeled

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loans that went through a whole bunch of

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front companies and proxies to her own

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companies um the prosecutors believe

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that of that 44 billion perhaps 27

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billion may never be recovered um that

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is a staggering loss and will be very

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very tough for the State Bank uh to to

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to make up in terms of saving the bank

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um really the authorities have sort of

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blamed Chong Milan and and and have

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talked about the way in which she was

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bribing officials and the kind of

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sophistication of this this network and

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really it it is part of an ongoing

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anti-corruption campaign that's been

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going for several years led by the

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communist authorities who say they're

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determined to stamp it out but of course

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it does raise a lot of questions which

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is how was it that this woman she's very

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high-profile she's one of the biggest

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property owners in in Vietnam how was

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she able to do that for 11 years and of

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course officially the authorities say

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well she was paying off this person and

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that and hiding this and that but it is

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extraordinary that it went on for 11

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years without being stopped and I think

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those questions still hang over whether

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the Vietnamese authorities are capable

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of reigning in this kind of Fraud and

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Jonathan you say that this was a trial

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that was followed by so many people in

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Vietnam and trong Milan is a well known

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property developer in the country but

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now she faces the death

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penalty that itself is extraordinary

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normally the death penalty is not

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usually handed down on women but I think

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this case was so exceptional in terms of

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its scale and the Damage it's done to

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Vietnam's finances they probably felt

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they needed to make an example of her

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they may also be trying to encourage her

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to give as much money back as as they

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can get her to do this is something the

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other um 80 defendants in court today

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have largely done they they're all more

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minor of course but these are all the

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people accused of conspiring with her

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including for example a Chief Inspector

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of the State Bank who was bribed 5

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million dollar according to prosecutors

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in order to look the other way they've

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all pleaded guilty and offered to bring

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back as much money as they can I think

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the state believes that TR Milan must

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have far more assets that she can return

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to the state to try and make up this

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massive hole in this bank's finances

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okay Jonathan head uh in Bangkok

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watching that huge trial in Vietnam and

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that verdict for thank you very much and

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Jonathan's written an analysis piece on

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the BBC News website with more

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background to