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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 about this case.

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Through its five weeks,

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so everyone in Vietnam knows a lot about it,

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not that's quite unusual there.

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They've wanted the public

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to know about this case.

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It is extraordinary the amounts of money are absolutely sterling.

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We're talking about a significant junk of Vietnam's GDP

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that this woman was able to siphon off

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over 11 years of through these secretly channeled loans

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that went through a whole bunch of front companies

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and proxies to her own companies.

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The prosecutors believe that

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of that 44 billion perhaps 27 billion dollars

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may never be recovered.

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That is a staggering loss

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and will be very very tough for the State Bank

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to make up in terms of saving the bank.

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Really the authorities have sort of blamed Truong My Lan

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and have talked about the way

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in which she was bribing officials

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and the kind of sophistication of this network

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and really it is part of an ongoing anti-corruption campaign

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that's been going for several years

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led by the communist authorities

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whose say they're determined to stamp it out

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but of course it does raise a lot of questions

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which is how was it that this woman.

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She's very high-profile.

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She's one of the biggest property owners in Vietnam.

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How was she able to do that for 11 years

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and of course officially the authorities say

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well she was paying off this person and that

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and hiding this and that

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but it is extraordinary that

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it went on for 11 years

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without being stopped

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and I think those questions still hang over

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whether the Vietnamese authorities are capable

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of reigning in this kind of fraud.

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And Jonathan you say that this was a trial

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that was followed by so many people in Vietnam

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and Truong My Lan is a well-known

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property developer in the country

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but now she faces the death penalty.

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That itself is extraordinary.

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Normally the death penalty is not usually

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handed down on women

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but I think this case was so exceptional

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in terms of its scale and the damages

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it's done to Vietnam's finances.

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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 they can get her to do.

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This is something

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the other 80 defendants in court today

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have largely done.

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They're all more minor, of course,

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but these are all the people

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accused of conspiring with her

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including, for example, a Chief Inspector of the State Bank

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who was bribed 5 million dollar

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according to prosecutors.

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In order to look the other way,

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they've all pleaded guilty and offered to bring back

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as much money as they can.

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I think the state believes that

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Truong My Lan must have far more assets

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that she can return to the state

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to try and make up this massive hole

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in this bank's finances.

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Okay, Jonathan Head, in Bangkok

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watching that huge trial in Vietnam

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and that verdict for thank you very much

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and Jonathan's written an analysis piece

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on the BBC News website with more background too.