(March 25): Vietnamese tycoon Truong My Lan is working to pay back hundreds of millions in stolen bank funds as her appeal hearing against a life sentence for charges including money laundering gets underway on Tuesday.

Lan — who already faces a death sentence from a separate trial for massive fraud — and her team are focusing on securing funds to pay back bondholders, according to her lawyer Giang Hong Thanh. She will then target the payments related to her death sentence.

She has requested that prosecution agencies recover for her more than 15 trillion dong (US$585 million or RM2.6 billion) worth of bond proceeds from banks, Thanh said. “She is also arranging to sell some assets to pay back the bondholders. She started working on this right after the first trial on the bond case,” he added.

The 68-year-old real estate magnate was sentenced to death last April after being found guilty of embezzling US$12.3 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank, Vietnam’s largest-ever fraud case.

Lan lost her appeal against the death penalty in December, but she can avoid execution if she returns at least three-quarters of the total embezzled assets, which prosecutors said amounted to an estimated US$11 billion.

During a second trial in October, Lan was sentenced to life in prison after she and 33 co-defendants were found guilty of illegally transporting roughly US$4.5 billion across international borders. She was also found to have laundered some 446 trillion dong in pilfered assets from Saigon Commercial Bank, and misappropriated about 30 trillion dong from investors via bond issuances. 

The real estate mogul’s downfall captured global attention due to the severity of the sentence and the vast sums of money involved. She has become the most high-profile case of the ruling Communist Party’s corruption crackdown, which has led to the detention of scores of senior officials and business executives.

Lan has hired four additional lawyers to petition on her behalf. Twenty-seven co-defendants have also filed for reduced sentences. The appeal hearing is expected to last until April 21.

Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee