The death sentence for property tycoon Truong My Lan has been upheld in Vietnam’s largest fraud case.

She had been convicted in April of embezzlement and bribery over the fraud amounting to 12.5 billion dollars, nearly 3% of Vietnam’s 2022 GDP. As chairwoman of the Van Thinh Phat property firm, Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that cost the bank 27 billion dollars in losses.

The court in Ho Chi Minh rejected her appeal against the conviction while reportedly adding that her death sentence could be commuted to life if she reimburses three-fourths of the losses, the state media outlet VN Express reported. The court said her violations had negatively affected banking, caused public disorder and eroded people’s trust, the online newspaper added.

Her arrest was among the most high-profile in an anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that intensified after 2022. The Blazing Furnace campaign touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. But the scale of her fraud shocked the nation with analysts raising questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred.

Truong My Lan, second left, attends trial in an appeal she filed against her death sentence in a financial fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Truong My Lan, second left, attends trial in an appeal she filed against her death sentence in a financial fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Tran Quynh/VNExpress via AP)

This dampened Vietnam’s economic outlook and made foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as a home for businesses pivoting their supply chains away from China.

Lan, 67, and her family had set up the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favour of a more market-oriented approach open to foreigners. The company grew into one of Vietnam’s richest property firms, with luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centres.

This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in co-ordination with Vietnam’s central bank. The court said that she used this to tap SCB for cash and, according to government documents, owned more than 90% of the bank while approving thousands of loans to “ghost companies”.

These loans, according to state media, found their way to her and she bribed officials to cover her tracks.

The scale of the crime meant the case was split into two trials, and Lan was sentenced to another life sentence in October. At that trial, she was accused of raising 1.2 billion dollars from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, state media reported.

She was also found guilty of siphoning off 18 billion dollars obtained through fraud and for using companies controlled by her to illegally transfer more than 4.5 billion dollars in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.