Property tycoon Truong My Lan was one of Vietnam’s richest businesswomen. She amassed an eye-wateringly valuable portfolio of luxury homes, hotels and commercial properties all over the country and abroad – allegedly by effectively turning a major bank into her own personal ATM.

On Tuesday, the 68-year-old lost her appeal against the death sentence for masterminding one of the biggest frauds in global history, in which billions vanished from Vietnam’s financial system.

She had been put on death row by a Ho Chi Minh City court in April for embezzling more than $12 billion – an amount equivalent to roughly 3% of Vietnam’s entire economy. The scale of the fraud rattled confidence in an economy which hopes to woo foreign investors away from competitors such as neighboring China, which could find itself hobbled by US tariffs under the second Donald Trump administration.

There is, however, a small glimmer of a reprieve for Lan – if she can afford it.

Her death sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment if she repays three-quarters of what she earned via the fraud, judges said in their ruling, state-run VnExpress International reported.

So, can she find $9 billion to spare, to save her life?

Humble beginnings

Born to a modest Sino-Vietnamese family in 1956, Lan started out selling cosmetics with her mother at Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to local and state media reports.

She steadily grew small businesses, but her wealth skyrocketed after she met Hong Kong investor Eric Chu. She set up real-estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the year she married Chu.

By 2011, Lan was already a powerful yet low-profile business figure in Ho Chi Minh City. That year, she became involved in the merger of the struggling Saigon Joint Commercial Bank with two other lenders, in a deal coordinated by Vietnam’s central bank.

She was well on her way to riches, high status and, eventually, infamy.

Lan’s arrest in October 2022 sparked a week-long run on Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), then the nation’s fifth-largest lender, over suspicions of its ties with Lan’s alleged financial crimes.

Her arrest set off a ticking bomb that reverberated across the business and political elites which became “too big to not recognize,” Giang said.

On paper, Lan owned 5% of SCB’s shares, the upper limit allowed under Vietnamese law. But prosecutors accuse her of indirectly owning 91.5% of the bank, according to state media reports of the trial. Prosecutors also alleged she bribed banking regulators and officials to cover her tracks.

Investigators accuse her and dozens of accomplices of taking loans and cash through a web of thousands of shell companies over more than a decade – siphoning off what amounts to a total of $44 billion.

By comparison, Malaysia’s long-running 1MDB state fund scandal that began in 2009, described as one of the world’s biggest financial crimes, involved the looting of about $4.5 billion. Even crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried’s $8 billion fraud is dwarfed by Lan’s case.

The sheer scale of the criminality meant the case was split into two trials.

Among the total losses, $12 billion was ruled to have been embezzled, for which Lan was sentenced to death. She was tried alongside 85 others, including former central bankers and government officials, as well as previous SCB executives.

Lan was also handed a life sentence in a separate trial in October after being found guilty of obtaining property by fraud, money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfers, VnExpress International reported, misappropriating roughly $27 billion.

“When you have corruption of this scale, it signals that things are bad in the country because it means legislation is not good, supervision is not good and the financial system is actually quite vulnerable,” Giang said.

Giang said Lan would likely not be executed immediately, adding her lawyers would probably request a review of the case or apply for a presidential pardon.

But the court’s harsh sentencing shows the authorities’ commitment to making Vietnam more transparent and better placed to attract foreign investment, especially if the US-China trade war reignites, he added.

Lan, for her part, has repeatedly made pleas for mercy. During a trial in October, Lan told the court that she never intended to commit fraud but was prepared to take responsibility, according to a VnExpress International report.

“I consider this my destiny,” Lan was quoted as saying.

Upholding the death sentence this week, the appeal court’s judges said Lan’s crimes caused grave consequences, and there are no mitigating circumstances to reduce her sentence, VnExpress International reported.

The ‘blazing furnace’

The real estate mogul’s downfall was stunning for the gargantuan scale of the fraud, rattling a country which has long projected an image of authoritarian stability.

Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party (CPV) has led the country of nearly 100 million people since it won the Vietnam War in 1975, priding itself on longevity, national unity and party loyalty.

The country transitioned away from a state-run economy towards a more market-oriented one in a series of reforms called “Doi Moi” in 1986, welcoming private businesses and foreign investors.

Now, Vietnam depends on manufacturing exports and foreign investment, and its leaders have been tightening the party’s grip on power by clamping down not only on dissent but also on corruption.

Former CPV secretary general Nguyen Phu Trong launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign – dubbed the “blazing furnace” – in 2016, which has led to the indictments of thousands of people, including party top brass.

Business and politics have long been intricately entwined in Vietnam. In 2023, the country ranked 83rd out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Index. And the country’s opaque media-political ecosystem means access to information is tightly controlled.

“In Vietnam, the land is controlled by the state. There’s no way she could have done what she did… without more official connivance,” Abuza said.

Her trial, which began in March, has played out publicly in state media, and parts of it were live-streamed outside the court in Ho Chi Minh City, deliberately designed to show the public that the government is following through on its crackdown.

But bank regulators and financial ministers are poorly paid and notoriously corrupt, making them arguably culpable for allowing the fraud to snowball, Abuza added.

“Vietnamese regulators were absolutely shocked at the extent and investigators were flabbergasted by the extent of the corruption,” Abuza said.

“But they did everything they could to make this case about her and have really tried not to draw lines linking her to communist party officials.”