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A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for multi-billion-dollar fraud begged a court to spare her life on Tuesday (Nov 26), saying she was trying to repay the stolen funds. Property developer Truong My Lan, 68, was convicted earlier this year of embezzling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) - which prosecutors said she controlled - and condemned to die for fraud totalling US$27 billion in one of the biggest corruption cases in history. She is appealing against her sentence at a court in Ho Chi Minh City, with the ruling expected in the coming days. In her final remarks...

Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan is in a race for her life. On Tuesday, the 68-year-old will hear the verdict in her appeal against the death sentence handed down on her in April for masterminding the world’s biggest bank fraud. It was a rare and shocking verdict - she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime. The court found she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies,...

It is the most spectacular trial ever held in Vietnam, befitting one of the greatest bank frauds the world has ever seen. Behind the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, a 67-year-old property developer stands accused of looting one of Vietnam's largest banks over a period of 11 years. The numbers involved are dizzying. Truong My Lan is charged with taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. Prosecutors say $27bn may never be recovered. The habitually secretive communist authorities have been uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said. The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP. Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked...