“LOSING MY MIND”
Around 36,000 people who bought bonds issued by SCB have been identified as victims of the fraud.
Online noodle seller Nguyen Thi Huong told AFP she wanted to die after losing US$20,000, her entire savings, through investing in a bond in 2022.
“When I learned that I had lost all the money I had deposited at SCB Bank, I felt like I was losing my mind,” said Huong, 33.
She developed insomnia, her health deteriorated from stress and she no longer had money to send her children to extra classes, making them fall behind their peers, she said.
“I sat by my father’s grave, and wished he would take me with him in death,” Huong said.
State media reported earlier that Lan and her associates stole around US$18 billion by taking assets from SCB between early 2018 and October 2022. Lan effectively owned a 90 per cent stake in the bank.
Lan, chair of major real estate developer Van Thinh Phat, ordered her accomplices to withdraw cash and transfer it out of SCB’s system, state media said.
She then hid the origins of the money and used it to settle debts between companies or transferred the money abroad for fake contracts.
Dozens of victims in the case held protests in central Hanoi as her latest trial started, demanding authorities help them get their money back.
Lan had apologised to the victims in court, according to state media, and said she was “not a bad person”.
She was given the death penalty in April after being found guilty of embezzling US$12.5 billion – a verdict she is appealing, though no date has yet been announced for it.
Prosecutors said the total damages caused amounted to US$27 billion – a figure equivalent to about six per cent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product in 2023.
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