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.
Through its five weeks,
so everyone in Vietnam knows a lot about it,
not that's quite unusual there.
They've wanted the public
to know about this case.
It is extraordinary the amounts of money
are absolutely sterling.
We're talking about a significant junk of Vietnam's GDP
that this woman was able to siphon off
over 11 years of through these secretly channeled loans
that went through a whole bunch of front companies
and proxies to her own companies.
The prosecutors believe that
of that 44 billion perhaps 27 billion dollars
may never be recovered.
That is a staggering loss
and will be very very tough for the State Bank
to make up in terms of saving the bank.
Really the authorities have sort of blamed Truong My Lan
and have talked about the way
in which she was bribing officials
and the kind of sophistication of this network
and really it is part of an ongoing anti-corruption campaign
that's been going for several years
led by the communist authorities
whose 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 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 Truong My Lan 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 damages
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 they can get her to do.
This is something
the other 80 defendants in court today
have largely done.
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
Truong My Lan 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, 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 too.