Truong My Lan: Vietnamese Millionaire, Charged with Multibillion-dollar Bank Fraud.
In the most spectacular trial ever held in Vietnam, and described as one of the greatest bank frauds the world has ever seen, a 67-year-old property developer has been accused of looting one of Vietnam's largest banks over a period of 11 years.
Behind the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan is been charged of cupping out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. Prosecutors say $27bn may never be recovered.
The usually reclusive communist officials have been remarkably transparent about this issue, providing the media with every little detail. It is claimed that 2,700 witnesses have been called to testify. There are over 200 attorneys and 10 state prosecutors involved.
Six tonnes of evidence are contained in 104 boxes. Truong My Lan is one of 85 defendants on trial; she refutes the allegations. She could be executed, along with thirteen other people.
"I believe this is the first show trial of its kind in the communist era," states David Brown, a former US State Department employee with extensive knowledge of Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."
In the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign, the trial represents the most dramatic chapter to yet.
A conservative ideologue steeped in Marxist theory, Nguyen Phu Trong believes that popular anger over untamed corruption poses an existential threat to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He began the campaign in earnest in 2016 after out-manoeuvring the then pro-business prime minister to retain the top job in the party.
The campaign has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country's richest women could join their ranks.
Truong My Lan comes from a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. It has long been the commercial engine of the Vietnamese economy, dating well back to its days as the anti-communist capital of South Vietnam, with a large, ethnic Chinese community.
She started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother, but began buying land and property after the Communist Party ushered in a period of economic reform, known as Doi Moi, in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.
Although Vietnam is best known outside the country for its fast-growing manufacturing sector, as an alternative supply chain to China, most wealthy Vietnamese made their money developing and speculating in property.
All land is officially state-owned. Getting access to it often relies on personal relationships with state officials. Corruption escalated as the economy grew, and became endemic.
By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.
Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.
They claim she abused her authority to designate her own employees as managers and then gave them orders to authorize hundreds of loans to the network of front firms under her control.
The sums extracted are astounding. Ninety-three percent of the bank's loans came from her.
Even in Vietnam's highest denomination bills, that much cash would weigh two tonnes.
She is also charged with giving lavish bribes to make sure her loans were never investigated. A former central bank chief inspector is among those indicted with her; she might receive a life sentence for receiving a $5 million bribe.
