The Vietnamese bank at the center of that nation’s largest fraud case is preparing to auction a portfolio of assets belonging to convicted real estate tycoon Truong My Lan.
The Japan Times is reporting Saigon Commercial Bank is planning to hire an auction firm to arrange for the sale of Lan’s assets, including office space in Ho Chi Minh City and a factory, warehouses and land plot in the southern province of Tay Ninh. Also slated for the auction part are 370,000 inventory goods from a luxury furniture company owned by Lan, along with her personal possessions including a car, a yacht, and more than 8,500 items of clothing, handbags and fashion accessories.
The 69-year-old Lan was the chairwoman of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat, one of Vietnam’s most prominent property developers, when she was formally charged with a $12.5 billion fraud. Lan illegally controlled Saigon Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank. The level of her fraud equaled nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.
In April 2024, she was sentenced to death after being convicted of embezzling $12.3 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank. She was also convicted on additional charges including money laundering in a second trial and was ordered by the court to repay $27 billion in damages.
Lan’s sentence was changed to life imprisonment when Vietnam abolished the death penalty for certain economic crimes.
“The workload is substantial, complex and unprecedented,” said the bank in a statement regarding the legal procedures for the valuation and sale of the assets. The proceeds from the auction will be used in recovering the multibillion-dollar losses incurred by Lan’s fraud.
Photo: Truong My Lan, courtesy of Van Thinh Phat
