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Sam Bankman-Fried might be having a rough go of it as he faces 25 years in the slammer, but hey, at least he didn’t commit large-scale financial fraud in Vietnam.
What happened: Real estate developer Truong My Lan has been sentenced to death by a Vietnamese court for orchestrating the country's largest-ever financial fraud. She embezzled over US$12 billion (or ~3% of Vietnam’s GDP) from the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank.
- Vietnam hands out more death sentences per capita than almost anywhere else in the world, but even then, death sentences for financial crimes are exceedingly rare.
- Lan was also ordered to pay $27 billion and received 20 years in prison for breaking banking regulations and offering bribes, which does seem a bit extra.
Zoom out: Lan’s death sentence is the biggest development yet in Vietnam’s anti-corruption crackdown, which began in 2013. Dubbed “Blazing Furnace,” it was initially meant to flush out corruption within the government but expanded to misdeeds in the private sector in 2018.
- Hundreds of officials and businesspeople have been arrested, fined, and sentenced, including the heads of some of Vietnam’s biggest and fastest-growing companies.
- Experts also believe that the raging fires of Blazing Furnace have something to do with the fact that Vietnam has seen two presidents resign within the past two years.
Why it matters: Vietnam has a growing role in the world economy as major companies from Apple to Boeing and Western governments (including Canada) increasingly look to it as a place to do business as they shift away from China. Its intensifying anti-corruption crusade could hamper plans by scaring off capital.—QH