Female billionaire Truong My Lan declared in court that her issuance of bonds was to lend the name of Van Thinh Phat Group to get money to help SCB overcome difficulties and promised to find every way to compensate the victims, according to reports from the domestic press.
Ms. Lan, chairman of Van Thinh Phat Group, has been on trial at the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City since September 19 in the second phase of the Truong My Lan-Van Thinh Phat-SCB case. In this trial, Ms. Lan, a small trader at An Dong market who became a real estate billionaire, was tried for issuing bonds to appropriate people’s money through SCB bank.
Specifically, according to the indictment, Ms. Lan is said to have issued 25 bond packages to 4 subsidiaries of Van Thinh Phat with a total value of more than 30,869 billion VND, equivalent to 1.2 billion USD. There have been more than 35,000 victims across the country who were “led” by SCB to buy these blank bonds where the issuing company had no collateral, was not rated for credit and is currently insolvent.
For this act, Ms. Lan was prosecuted for the crime of “Fraudulent appropriation of property”. In addition, also in phase 2, Ms. Lan was also prosecuted for two more crimes: “Money Laundering” with a total amount of more than 445,000 billion VND, or about 19 billion USD, and “Illegal transportation of currency across borders”. The total amount is more than 106,000 billion, or 4.5 billion USD.
‘Want to help SCB’
When questioned by the Court at the trial on September 23, Ms. Lan declared that she “did not know or know” anything about bond issuance and “also had no need to issue bonds”. She said she only “borrowed” the names of 4 subsidiaries of Van Thinh Phat Group, An Dong, Sunny Word, Quang Thuan and Setra, to SCB to issue bonds to “help” SCB.
“The defendant lent it [các công ty con] to help SCB overcome difficulties,” Ms. Lan was quoted by Tuoi Tre as testifying in court, and said that the reason she made this decision was because she was criticized by SCB leaders Mr. Dinh Van Thanh, former president, and Ms. Nguyen Phuong Hong, deputy general director, asked for help and influence.
“Phuong Hong said ‘Sister, the bank is constantly being inspected and doesn’t have money to pay people’, so she suggested borrowing from Van Thinh Phat’s companies to issue bonds,” Ms. Lan said in her testimony quoted by VnExpress. again and said she agreed with this proposal because she “had put so many assets into SCB and did not want SCB to collapse.”
After that, Ms. Lan organized a lunch at the headquarters of Van Thinh Phat Group with leaders of the Group, SCB and Tan Viet Securities Company to discuss and agree on the issuance of bonds, also according to Ms. Lan’s testimony.
“What does the defendant know to make a policy? The defendant only agreed to lend to the company, but the issuance was done by the bank,” Ms. Lan was quoted as saying in her defense before the Court.
Also according to VnExpress’s report, Ms. Lan affirmed that the money raised from the bonds was “not used for Van Thinh Phat and herself” but “used for SCB”. However, the indictment said that this money was used by Van Thinh Phat to repay bank loans, pay principal and interest on bonds, spend on projects, transfer money abroad and other personal purposes of Ms. Lan. .
Ms. Hong suddenly passed away not long after the case was prosecuted and Mr. Thanh is currently on the run.
Commitment to compensation
Although she believes that she was taken advantage of by SCB to issue bonds, Ms. Lan pledged to compensate the victims “at all costs”.
“The bondholders, there are many elderly people, but because they trusted SCB as well as Truong My Lan’s reputation, they bought bonds to help SCB, so the defendant will at all costs be responsible to the bondholders, even in the future. In any case, the defendant will try his best to compensate,” Ms. Lan was quoted by Tuoi Tre as saying in court.
VnExpress reported that Ms. Lan “cried and said” that she “wholeheartedly wanted to fix the damage to the people” but was currently detained and could not do anything.
Tuoi Tre said Ms. Lan asked the Court to create conditions to overcome the consequences.
According to this newspaper, Ms. Lan said from prison that she had submitted a petition to the Court presenting a compensation plan for the victims. The amount of money she will take out to pay the people will include 21,000 billion VND that the Court has declared that individuals and organizations must return to her after the end of phase 1 of the case, 17,320 billion VND of money raised from bonds that many banks had received, so she asked the Court to help them recover them.
In addition, Ms. Lan said she is “willing to use all of her family’s assets to repair the damage”, including the 6A project in Trung Son area, Ho Chi Minh City, which SCB is borrowing at a value according to is up to 20,000 billion VND.
“If that’s not enough, the defendant also has a project in the central area of District 1 worth 3 times more than Times Square that has not yet been distrained,” Ms. Lan was quoted as saying by VnExpress, saying she still has 65 properties. can be used to overcome the more than 386 billion VND that her family has paid to the investigation agency.
Does SCB lure people?
Regarding SCB’s role in this bond fraud, Mr. Vo Tan Hoang Van, former general director of SCB, cried on September 20 and admitted to the Court that he “directed and trained consultants, selling “blank bonds” to SCB customers, according to VnExpress’s report.
The conclusion of the investigation agency cited by this newspaper determined that to deploy the bond offering, Mr. Van directed the organization of sales and new product training for directors and employees at branches. SCB’s branches and transaction offices, offering commission policies and emulation programs for employees to promote bond sales to the people.
Many SCB bond victims told VOA that they came to SCB bank to deposit savings and were advised by staff about “flexible savings packages with high interest rates” and because they trusted the bank they bought without paying. knew it was a bond of Van Thinh Phat Group.
However, according to VnExpress, Mr. Van told the Court that SCB “did not change concepts” when consulting victims.
In phase 1 of the trial on SCB Bank’s withdrawal, Ms. Lan was sentenced to death by the Court on April 11 – the combined sentence for three crimes was “Violating regulations on lending in activities of credit institutions”, “Bribing” and “Embezzlement of assets”.
In addition to the death sentence, Ms. Lan and her criminally responsible accomplices must pay compensation of 498,000 billion VND, or nearly 20 billion dollars, to SCB bank.
(According to VOA)