The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was convicted for orchestrating Vietnam’s biggest ever financial fraud case, amounting to 12.5 billion dollars (£9.4 billion) — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP and for illegally controlling a major bank allowing loans that resulted in losses of 27 billion dollars (£20.
3 billion), state media said. Her arrest and conviction was one of the highest profile cases in an anti-corruption drive that has intensified since 2022. The so-called blazing furnace campaign has also singed the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics and led to the resignation of a former president who was implicated in it.
Lan is being tried on fresh charges of appropriating property fraudulently and money laundering. According to a police investigation, she raised 1.2 billion dollars (£905.
7 million) from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, state media reports say. Investigators found 21 companies controlled by Lan’s Van Thinh Phat that illegally transferred over 4.5 billion dollars (£3.
3 billion) in and out of Vietnam between 2012-2022. She is also accused of siphoning off 18 billion dollars (£13.5 billion) obtained through fraud.
The case also involves 33 other defendants. It is expected to last a month. Lan and her family established the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shifted from a state-run economy to a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreign investors.
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