Corruption: An Unwinnable Battle?

A seemingly unknown name until April this year, the corruption case of Vietnamese property magnate Truong My Lan gripped the world’s attention.

- Jennifer Paldano Goonewardane

It was not only for the severity of the sentence she received but the justice system’s success in netting a coterie of influential persons in public office and banking for aiding her decade-long swindling spree.

Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan must have been a genius while oozing oodles of charisma to pull through a national heist that amounted to three percent of her country’s GDP. A decade-long raid on the kitty began in 2012 and ended in 2022 with her arrest, during which she obtained USD 44 billion in illegal loans through the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB). She was sentenced to death by the court. But she was not alone in the game. Colluding with her were high ranking politicians and public officials who looked the other way while their stretched hands and open palms received millions of dollars. The verdict has become one of the most sensational outcomes of a case that gripped Vietnam, mainly because such a severe sentence was rare for fraud, and so harsh a sentence on a woman was even rarer.