Ms. Truong My Lan has a group of foreign tycoons lending her 400 USD, discovered abnormalities

On November 18, the appeal hearing of Ms. Truong My Lan and 47 accomplices and some related people continued the debate. The defense lawyer for the defendant Lan said that a group of tycoons agreed to lend the owner of Van Thinh Phat 400 million USD.

According to VnExpress, Ms. Truong My Lan said that she had just accessed new documents and discovered that she was held responsible for VND125,000 billion in loans from customers at SCB, from before she participated in restructuring.

"Since the first instance verdict was announced, the defendant has had no documents in hand to clarify the amount of money he was accused of embezzling. The case file has more than 6 tons of documents, and the defendant's lawyer cannot photocopy all of them," Ms. Truong My Lan stated in her supplementary defense on November 18.

Ms. Lan said that when she had access to new documents, she discovered that in the amount of money that SCB is accused of embezzling (673,000 billion VND), there was also a principal debt of 125,000 billion VND left by many customers before she participated in restructuring, as well as many other loans that she had not had the opportunity to compare since her arrest.

Accordingly, there were many loans formed before the merger of the 3 banks (January 1, 2012). Some were direct loans from customers of the 3 old banks, and some were loans from customers familiar with Mr. Le Quang Nhuong (former chairman of the old SCB). After the merger of the 3 banks, Ms. Lan became a major shareholder of the new SCB, and became the "debt bearer" of these loans.

According to what she knows, the loans left by customers before restructuring are 125,000 billion VND. Among them, there are many debts left by First Bank such as the Cho Vai Project... which are very large, up to 100,000 billion VND. In total, there are 13/18 loans of the projects that Ms. Lan remembers and those are "undeniable loans that everyone knows need to be clarified". According to Ms. Lan, all of these loans are from Mr. Nhuong's group of friends, including Phuong Trang Company, which SCB cannot handle due to lack of legality.

"These amounts of money are completely unrelated to the defendant. It is impossible to attribute the defendant to causing damage or appropriating the outstanding balance of those loans," Ms. Lan said, asking the panel of judges to allow her to confront SCB. Her lawyers will present details of these debts in a document sent to the panel of judges.

The Chairman then asked SCB to focus on recording this issue to debate again with Ms. Lan.

According to Dan Tri, also at court, lawyer Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang (defending defendant Lan) requested the panel of judges to apply a special mechanism to Ms. Truong My Lan.

At the same time, Ms. Trang said that there is currently a group of people abroad who have agreed to lend defendant Lan 400 million USD to pay off debts and release the mortgage on the building at 29 Lieu Giai (Hanoi). The defense attorney for the owner of Van Thinh Phat said that the parties have reached an agreement and are applying to the State Bank for approval to transfer money from abroad to Vietnam.

Next, lawyer Trang asked the People's Procuracy to consider not sentencing defendant Truong My Lan to death. The defense attorney said that if Ms. Lan was sentenced to death, the execution of the sentence and the detention regime would make it difficult for foreign investors to access projects and return money to the State.

According to the first instance verdict, during the 10 years of acquiring SCB, Ms. Lan directed her accomplices to disburse a total of more than 2,500 loans to a group of companies in the Van Thinh Phat ecosystem.

By October 2022, Ms. Lan and Van Thinh Phat's group still had nearly 1,300 loans with an outstanding principal and interest of VND 677,000 billion. The court determined that this was the amount of damage in the case and Ms. Lan was obliged to compensate SCB. After deducting some loans that were settled during the trial, Ms. Lan still had to compensate SCB VND 673,000 billion.

In April, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court sentenced Ms. Truong My Lan to 20 years in prison for bribery; 20 years in prison for violating lending regulations in the operations of credit institutions and death penalty for embezzlement. The total sentence is death sentence.

After the above verdict, Ms. Lan appealed for her life. Presenting her views in court, the representative of the High People's Procuracy in Ho Chi Minh City requested the panel of judges to reject the appeal and sentence the defendant Lan to death.

Truong My Lan case: How was the "mountain of property" declared by the appellate court to be handled? Thiên Di14:53:55 05/12/2024After nearly 1 month of appellate trial, on December 3, the High Court in Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh City sentenced the defendant Truong My Lan (68 years old, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Van Thinh Phat Group) and 47 accomplices causing serious damage to Saigon Commercial Joint Stock...