On June 25, Vietnam’s National Assembly passed a revised version of the Criminal Code, abolishing the death penalty for eight crimes, including embezzlement and misappropriation of property. After the bill takes effect on July 1, the death penalty that has not yet been executed will be commuted to life imprisonment, and Zhang Meilan, the richest woman involved in the case, will be spared from death.
Zhang Meilan, 68, was accused of defrauding $27 billion (about 6% of Vietnam’s GDP) by controlling Saigon Commercial Bank, setting a record for the country’s largest financial fraud. Her lawyer said that after learning of the retrial, Zhang Meilan’s lawyer said, “She is very happy.” Vietnamese officials said that the adjustment was to adapt to social and economic changes because most death sentences were not actually executed.
Zhang Meilan, 68, is the richest woman in Vietnam and chairman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Group. She committed the largest financial fraud case in Vietnam’s history. Last November, the Vietnamese court rejected Zhang Meilan’s appeal in the second instance and upheld the death sentence.
The Zhang Meilan case is the most high-profile anti-corruption case in Vietnam in recent years. Vietnamese officials said that they summoned 2,700 people to testify in the case, and the evidence involved was packed into 104 boxes, weighing a total of 6 tons.
Vietnamese law does not allow private equity in banks to exceed 5%. Vietnamese prosecutors accused Zhang Meilan of controlling more than 90% of the shares of Saigon Commercial Bank through hundreds of shell companies, and then emptied the bank and used the loans for personal real estate development projects. Zhang Meilan said that part of the loans were bad debts left by the original bank management before she took control, and the money she borrowed from the bank had been “debt extension” and had real estate projects as collateral, and there was no intentional embezzlement of bank property. In court, Zhang Meilan questioned why Saigon Commercial Bank did not show complete document records, so that she was charged with embezzlement of property. “I feel ashamed when I think about this, especially since there are dozens of brothers and sisters who used to work at Saigon Commercial Bank and suffer with me.”
Her lawyer previously revealed that in order to avoid the death penalty for fraud, Zhang Meilan wrote a letter to a government-supervised committee responsible for managing her property, saying that her assets were “seriously undervalued”, which might cause losses to the country and affect her rights, and pleaded with the authorities to allow her to participate in the disposal of assets.
Zhang Meilan mentioned in the letter that the government appointed a company to value her 726 assets, several of which were real estate projects located in prime locations in major cities in Vietnam, with an estimated value of approximately US$9.7 billion. She pointed out that if the latest land price standards were re-evaluated, the value of these assets could increase by 3 to 5 times. She also pointed out that if the other 440 assets were valued, the government could recover at least another US$7.7 billion.
“With my 30 years of real estate experience and deep understanding of the law, I can cultivate most assets into ‘golden goose’ so that the government can recover its costs,” Zhang Meilan wrote in the letter.
Earlier, Vietnamese prosecutors said that if Truong My-lan could come up with $11 billion, she could avoid lethal injection. As of April 3 this year, Vietnamese authorities had seized assets worth 8 trillion Vietnamese dong from Truong My-lan. The prosecutors said they expected to recover about 15 trillion Vietnamese dong from other parties involved in the case.