Truong My Lan: Vietnamese tycoon in a race to repay $9 billion to avoid execution

CNN — Property tycoon Truong My Lan was one of Vietnam’s richest businesswomen. She had been put on death row by a Ho Chi Minh City court in April for embezzling more than $12 billion – an amount equivalent to roughly 3% of Vietnam’s entire economy. Humble beginnings Born to a modest Sino-Vietnamese family in 1956, Lan started out selling cosmetics with her mother at Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to local and state media reports. Lan’s arrest in October 2022 sparked a week-long run on Saigon Commercial Bank, then the nation’s fifth-largest lender, over suspicions of its ties with Lan’s alleged financial crimes. Upholding the death sentence this week, the appeal court’s judges said Lan’s crimes caused grave consequences, and there are no mitigating circumstances to reduce her sentence, VnExpress International reported.