Truong My Lan at her first trial in Ho Chi Minh City. The real estate mogul was convicted of masterminding a $12.3 billion dollar fraud in April, and sentenced to death.
Photographer: EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The Billionaire Property Queen on Death Row in Vietnam
Nobody is untouchable as the Communist Party’s anti-corruption drive ensnares a growing roll call of the wealthy and powerful.
The police arrived early for the start of Truong My Lan’s second trial. The disgraced Vietnamese real estate mogul had already been convicted of masterminding a $12.3 billion fraud back in April, and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Five months later, outside the People’s Court in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, officers set up a huge TV screen and arranged blue plastic stools under a giant tarpaulin so people could watch the live stream of the second act, whatever the weather. Sure enough, the crowds came.
By the time Lan, once one of wealthiest people in Vietnam, and her 33 co-defendants appeared in court at 8:15 a.m., scores of onlookers were in place. Many held bonds issued through Lan’s property empire and had seen their investments all but wiped out. A handful waved the documents in the air as they pushed against police and demanded to be let into the court complex. Across the street, a few bystanders wore T-shirts with slogans insisting that the central bank make them whole — an unusually public protestation in a one-party state with no local, independent media and where human rights organizations are constrained.