Truong My Lan, a prominent Vietnamese property tycoon previously sentenced to death for a massive fraud totalling $27 billion, will no longer face execution.
Her lawyer confirmed on Wednesday that her death penalty has been commuted to life imprisonment, following Vietnam’s decision to abolish capital punishment for eight crimes, including property embezzlement.
Lan’s lawyer, Giang Hong Thanh, told AFP that the 68-year-old property developer was “very happy” to learn of the conversion to life imprisonment.
This development comes as Vietnam officially abolished the death penalty for eight crimes, including espionage, graft, and attempting to overthrow the government, according to state media.
Last year, Lan was convicted of swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), which prosecutors claimed she controlled, and was originally sentenced to death for fraud with damages amounting to $27 billion—a sum equivalent to approximately six per cent of Vietnam’s GDP.
Despite appealing the verdict in a month-long trial, the Ho Chi Minh City court in December found no basis to reduce her sentence. However, the court had indicated that her sentence could be reduced to life imprisonment if she returned three-quarters of the stolen assets.
Her lawyer stated on Wednesday that Lan “is still actively cooperating with state agencies of Vietnam and her partners to find ways to deal with (her) assets and restructure SCB to come to a final solution to the case” and that further sentence reductions could be considered if additional conditions are met.
Although Lan officially owned only 5 per cent of SCB’s shares, courts concluded that she effectively controlled over 90 per cent through her family, friends, and staff.
Her actions led to tens of thousands of people losing their savings, triggering rare public protests in the communist nation.
In a separate $17 billion money-laundering case, Lan’s life imprisonment sentence was reduced to 30 years on appeal in April.
Under the amended penal code, approved by the National Assembly on Wednesday, individuals sentenced to death for the newly abolished capital offences before July 1 will have their sentences automatically converted to life imprisonment by the chief judge of the Supreme People’s Court.
Minister of Public Security Luong Tam Quang noted that the “current structure of capital punishment was problematic and, in some cases, misaligned with evolving socio-economic conditions and the realities of crime prevention.”
Minister of Justice Nguyen Hai Ninh added that one reason for the change was that most individuals sentenced to death for these crimes were not executed.
While the exact number of executions is not public, Amnesty International estimated that over 1,200 people were on death row in Vietnam by the end of 2024.
