Death sentence upheld for defendant Truong My Lan

On December 3, after nearly 1 month of trial and deliberation, the Trial Panel of the first-phase appeal trial of the case at Van Thinh Phat Group Joint Stock Company (Van Thinh Phat Group) and Saigon Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SCB Bank) announced the verdict for the defendants.

Defendant Truong My Lan (former Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Van Thinh Phat Group) was sentenced to death.

Previously, the first instance verdict of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court sentenced Truong My Lan to 20 years in prison for "Violating regulations on lending in the operations of credit institutions"; "death penalty for "Embezzlement of property"; "20 years in prison for "Bribery"; "the total sentence is death penalty. The defendant has filed an appeal to reduce the sentence.

The panel of judges determined that through questioning and public debate in court, the defendants had admitted the entire content of the case. The defendants' statements were consistent with each other, with the documents and evidence in the file, and there was a basis to determine that Truong My Lan was the owner of Van Thinh Phat Group and many other companies operating under the group model with Van Thinh Phat as the center, controlling the activities of the remaining companies.

After learning that three banks, including SCB Bank, Vietnam Tin Nghia Bank and De Nhat Bank, had lost liquidity and were forced to merge or acquire, defendant Truong My Lan asked many of her relatives and friends to buy a large number of shares. As of October 2022, defendant Lan had acquired and held about 91.5% of SCB Bank's shares.

The indictment shows that although defendant Truong My Lan does not hold any positions at SCB, she indirectly owns over 91% of the bank’s shares. Therefore, defendant Lan has the right to control and decide on the bank’s issues and becomes the highest decision-maker at SCB Bank.

Taking advantage of her role as an almost absolute shareholder of the bank, Truong My Lan directed defendants who were leaders of the bank such as Bui Anh Dung, Truong Khanh Hoang, Tran Thi My Dung, Vo Tan Hoang Van... to withdraw money from the bank to serve her own purposes. This caused particularly large losses.

The investigation results determined that during the period from January 1, 2012 to October 7, 2022, defendant Truong My Lan directed the creation of 2,527 fake loan applications to disburse from SCB Bank a total amount of VND 1,066,608 billion.

As of October 17, 2022, the group of defendants Lan still had 1,284 loans with an outstanding debt of VND 677,286 billion. The loans are all group 5 debt, with no possibility of recovery. The outstanding principal of defendant Truong My Lan's loans accounts for 93% of the total outstanding principal of 23,042 outstanding loans at SCB Bank.

After deducting the value of the collateral, the indictment determined that defendant Truong My Lan caused damage to SCB Bank of about 498,000 billion VND.

From January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2017, the defendant violated regulations on banking activities and other activities related to banking activities, causing losses of more than VND 64,000 billion, after deducting the value of assets securing loans.

From January 1, 2018 to October 7, 2022, the defendant embezzled more than VND 304,000 billion in principal debt and more than VND 129,000 billion in interest arising from the principal debt, after deducting the value of the assets securing the loans.

The criminal acts of the defendant Truong My Lan and her accomplices are the fundamental and essential causes leading to SCB Bank's complete loss of liquidity, a huge credit balance that cannot be recovered, and negative equity of VND 443,769 billion. Therefore, the Trial Panel argues that there are sufficient signs of a crime to charge the defendant Lan with embezzlement. This finding is also the argument for the Trial Panel to reject the defense attorneys' view that the defendant Lan did not hold any position in SCB Bank and was not the subject of the crime.

In addition, the Trial Panel stated that due to the fundamental changes in criminal law policies in terms of handling before and after January 1, 2018, after January 1, 2018, the defendants' actions had sufficient elements to constitute the crime of embezzlement of property (this crime also applies in the private sector).

The trial panel emphasized that the actions of defendant Truong My Lan were particularly serious; she was the mastermind, giving the other defendants the plan to carry out, simultaneously committing three crimes, causing loss of national monetary security.

The court of first instance sentenced defendant Lan to 20 years in prison for violating regulations on lending in the operations of credit institutions; death penalty for embezzlement; and 20 years in prison for bribery, which is well-founded and consistent with the nature and criminal acts committed by the defendant, and is not unjust.

At the appeal hearing, defendant Truong My Lan had a profound change in perception, repented and presented many mitigating circumstances. At the same time, the defendant proposed plans, bringing in assets to remedy the consequences including more than 600 property codes that had been valued, 440 property codes that had not been valued, 658 property codes of defendant Lan's family and Project 6A Trung Son Binh Chanh area.

On that basis, the Trial Panel found that there was sufficient basis to partially accept the opinion of the Ho Chi Minh City High People's Procuracy in considering reducing the sentence for defendant Lan for the crime of violating regulations on lending in the operations of credit institutions.

However, in general, the Trial Panel believes that this case is particularly serious, the defendant committed many crimes with particularly serious consequences, so there is no basis for mitigating the crimes of embezzlement and bribery.

In addition, the assets that defendant Lan brought in did not have sufficient legal basis to determine the value of the assets, so there was no basis to determine that the defendant had sufficiently remedied the consequences of the case to apply a reduction in the death penalty for the defendant.

However, the Trial Panel also noted that according to legal regulations, a person sentenced to death after the verdict comes into effect, if he continues to actively remedy 3/4 of the consequences of the case during the execution phase, will be considered for conversion from death penalty to life imprisonment.