2mo ago

Real estate tycoon must pay $9 billion to avoid execution in Vietnam

www.nbcnews.com Real estate tycoon must pay $9 billion to avoid execution in Vietnam

Truong My Lan’s death sentence could reportedly be commuted to life in prison if she repays three-quarters of the $12 billion she was convicted of embezzling.

Summary

Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.

Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.

Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.

Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.

171 comments

All we gotta do is sentence a handful of billionaires to death and watch the behaviour change when they realize they're not insulated from consequence anymore.
- Yeah but what they are going to do is make sure they get those protections back. They aren't going to get better.
  
  Then sentence more of them as necessary. Im all for sweeping changes but we're not getting them. Convincing America to kill someone seems way more likely to me.
- Imagine all the outrage from red state conservatives if we attempted this.
  
  Or from blue state liberals because "we're better than them" or some shit.
  
  It’s not like any of us want life to be made so difficult when we’re billionaires either
  
  I'm okay with the outrage.
  
  Oh who cares, they get outraged when a day ends in y.
  
  There wouldn't be any outrage outside of 100s of the wealthy donors. Liberals would completely be more outraged because of norms and civility. The entire point of "drain the swamp" was that most people hate oligarchs, the point of Republicans is to redirect this off into racist and unproductive channels, where nothing ever comes of this hate for corporate and wealthy overlords.
- Hold them accountable for all the preventable deaths resulting from them screwing around with the economy. 2008 would have seen a ton of them going to prison for the rest of their life.
  
  2008 turned me from a lib into an anarchist. I've completely lost faith in their facade over oligarchy.
- In most, if not all, of the world billionaires can just murder whomever they can't buy.
  
  Clearly not Vietnam

Two things America loves: billionaires and the death sentence. It has just never thought to combine them in this way.
- I don't care for billionaires or the death sentence.
  If we revised the system I could be okay with the death sentence in some situations but the way it is now makes absolutely no sense.
  
  I am against the death penalty and would only give it consideration in the case of billionaires

Can we do this in Canada?? I know of a few deserving candidates
- USA enters the chat
  
  Because the death penalty is obviously only applied to those most deserving it and not to those with the smallest defence budget and the least public support
- We’d have to have China execute them…
  
  Russia could make them some tea. ☢️

Any fans of George Carlin here? Remember his bit about the death penalty saying that he would rather have it be done not to poor violent criminals like gangsters and common idiotic murderers, but would rather have it done to the people who really and truly fear death... like major league white collar criminals.
Gang members live violent lives and often don't have optimistic views for the future, so they know that any day might be their last. A wealthy ass failson of super millionaires who prides himself on fucking over thousands of people every day and is almost pleased to see lawsuits coming in for stolen wages and sexual harassment, however, is confident that they will die free and wealthy and probably have some active organizations named after them.
So the death penalty for them, especially when are forced to spend their time awaiting it in some cold, damp and dirty cell with prison guards who were born in poverty and treat them no differently than some poor drug-addicted shoplifter, is a terrifying concept. Also what needs to happen is that ALL their assets are confiscated. I mean ALL of them. No loopholes for transferring that shit overseas or 'technically it's in my wife's/Son's name' bullshit. They get nothing. Their family gets nothing and will be, at best, a middle class family with middle class prospects going forward (no more failsons from that lineage).
This would be the best punishment for any billionaire. They die, get buried in a potter's field or prison graveyard like common thugs, and their legacies smashed.
- I think this case is closely watched by the elites who it may concern. Especially the social reaction. I am waiting for them to spin it like "Communist Dictatorship Vietnam" in conservative media (if it gains mainstream traction).
  
  In all honesty, the enlightenment revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries needed to bring this change about. To hold the wealthy to much higher standards than the poor. If that did happen, we wouldn't be living in the capitalist hellscape that is today.

I don't support the death penalty, but I won't be terribly sad if a criminal billionaire gets executed by their own government.
- I fully support it for the rich and powerful just because prisons can't reliably hold them. If they're not put in the ground, they'll worm their way out of consequences eventually.
  
  Can I ask what's the cutoff? How much money/how high of a position qualifies you for the electric chair?

returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds)
You can keep the 3 billion and live?
reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
but it has to be in jail?
- You can keep the 3 billion and live?
  No, as another comment pointed out, that isn't legal. The assets she has from her embezzled money aren't liquid; she doesn't have $12 billion literally sitting in a bank account. These have to be sold off for đồng, and especially if she's forced to quickly sell them off in exchange for her life (somehow another reason why the death penalty is stupid), she'll likely retrieve substantially less than she could otherwise by being able to wait for better opportunities to sell.
  
  đồng
  Teehee
- She still deserves to be in jail. $12 billion is no small amount, and if she can pay back that $9 billion, or even if she can pay back the entire amount, she still had committed a serious crime and deserves to go to jail.
  And don’t even think about her keeping that $3 billion. That’s illegal money that she still needs to pay back.
  
  ok, so why not just have that be the condition for the removal of the death penalty?

Nice to see some good news for once

The amount of people in here pushing for the death penalty when it's used on people they dislike is sickening...
This is a penalty that needs to be abolished, not expanded or made exceptions for.
- You're completely right.
  However, I feel like I'd make an exception for people who massively contribute to an actual existential threat to humanity. Ie billionaires. All billionaires.
  I'm not saying we should kill them. I'm saying we should use the possibility of that being on the table to make them pay their taxes. The entire planet is ruined by billionaires when we could literally everyone have enough to have our basic needs met while having an economy and industry which isn't on track to make the planet uninhabitable for us, seeing as it's the only planet known to support life.
  Yes, all life is important. That's why all life should be protected by making sure the planet doesn't become one huge airfryer. If while doing that a few billionaires get guillotined, I'm honestly fine with it. I'd prefer they'd just actually help people instead of being selfish assholes, but if them being selfish assholes is putting everyone else in danger, then the choice is clear, no matter your views on the death penalty. (Which as you say, shouldn't be a thing.)
  
  I dunno, reducing them to being not-billionaires and even not-millionaires would actually be a pretty just sentence IMO. I bet being reduced to a regular Joe would hurt some of them more than the death penalty
  
  I’m not saying we should kill them. I’m saying we should use the possibility of that being on the table to make them pay their taxes.
  I'm guessing most of them do pay their taxes. There are just lots of loopholes that have been lobbied for by the rich that they are using that their expensive tax accountants find for them. Instead of whacking billionaires, maybe get rid of the tax loopholes that let them pay so much less in taxes as compared to their extreme wealth.
- Revolutions aren't pillow fights.
  
  True, but they’re demands of a better world. There’s a difference between killing in a revolution and a 60 year old communist government executing an embezzler instead of giving her life in prison
  
  The state ending someone's life for breaking its laws and then having people here who would normally condemn the use of capital punishment compare it to a revolution and call it justified just because the state in question claims to be socialist is just so uniquely Lemmy.
  
  This is not a revolution. It's the state killing a person. The death penalty is ALWAYS unacceptable, without expections. Do I want billionares to die? Hell yes! Do I think the state should have the power to kill people? Hell no!
- Why, though? The usual reasoning for abolishing the death penalty is the argument that we might make a mistake and mistakenly sentence innocent people to death. But what about crimes like this, where the crime is entirely on paper, fully documented, and with no risk that you're prosecuting the wrong person?
  Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted with no replies. I'm asking an actual question here, if you disagree why not state your opinion?
  
  I think it's a valid question. I wouldn't say that the only reason for abolishing the death penalty is because we might make a mistake... that definitely factors into it, but there's more to it.
  Ask yourself what purpose does it serve to put someone to death? They're already in jail/prison and no longer a threat to society. Deterrence? Is the death penalty any more of a deterrence than a life sentence?
  The only purpose I can think of for the death penalty is that it's for "Revenge". It doesn't actually fix anything in of itself. It doesn't resolve disputes, it doesn't really solve anything.
  
  I want to point out that this is already the standard for conviction. The finder of fact must find the accused to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt before convicting them. So from a legal perspective, everyone convicted of a crime already has been proven guilty to the highest possible standard. If there is any shred of doubt at all about the guilt of the accused, they're supposed to be acquitted. It's only possible in retrospect when new evidence emerges that exonerates the accused that it can be determined that the original guilty verdict was incorrect. You can't really "force" this evidence to emerge with any amount of policy changes. It just happens over time.
  For example, witnesses lie. Maybe five years after the fact they feel bad about lying and retract their testimony. Maybe some of the investigators assigned to the case just made up some evidence to get the accused convicted in court because they just thought there was no way he could be innocent and they just needed to cook up the evidence to get them declared guilty, and they can only admit that when the statute of limitation passes. Or maybe, three years later, a convenience store manager deleting old footage happens upon a CCTV tape giving the accused an alibi. Or maybe still, the accused was actually framed and their framers only got caught ten years later doing some other crime, and it turned out that they forged the accused's signatures on those documents and used their computer to send those e-mails without their knowledge. I could go on.
  So if your proposed standard is applied, it would not actually exclude anyone from execution because everyone who's been convicted has already been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
  
  Well fuck billionaires but papers can and trials can be wrong.
  Like who's to say she wasn't a patsy?
  I'm not saying she was, but how would you prove beyond any doubt that she wasn't?
  Probably this case is an open-and-shut case but my point is valid, I think.
- Nonsense. I oppose the death penalty for almost all crimes. It's just too easy to render an inaccurate verdict, and you can't undo an execution.
  But we don't have any doubt about billionaires. They're verifiably guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt.
  I also think they should be able to avoid the death penalty by giving up their wealth and living on minimum wage for a number of years equal to the number of billions they captured and withheld from society.
- Seems to be a common mindset among americans. As european I don't understand it.
- Yea, I'm against the death penalty too. This shit shouldn't be legal. It should be illegal and brutal. Like the mob takes you to the square and threatens to lynch you unless you give away the billionaire persona. The cops turn a blind eye. Total societal shame. Collapse of moral and legal order. And then afterwards, we all feel bad about it and we legislate a ban on wealth hoarding so that our society never falls to those kinds of depths ever again.
  
  The fact that this comment likely isn't satire, should be concerning.
  People: please read books. That's all I'm going to say. Read about your ideology and its bloody, storied history, before posting ignorant shit like this.
- I used to be against the death penalty. Problem is that obscenely rich and well connected people can just hire assassins to execute people they don't like with impunity. Case in point the Boeing engineer that supposedly committed suicide briefly before his hearing on Boeings deliberate security violations leading to hundreds of people slaughtered in preventable plane accidents.
  Executing the rich and powerful is necessary to level the playing field.
- Pearl clutching liberals? Not once.
- It's a classic.
  I'm against the death penalty, but...
  There are no buts; if there's a "but" then you're pro capital punishment.
  
  It's a classic false dichotomy.
  I'm against killing people, but if someone tries to kill me...
- Fuck accountability right?
  
  That's not what I'm saying or implying in any way.

Bring this shit to the US. Chop chop.
- They defrauded 12 billion, only have to pay 9? Sounds like they just made 3 billion.
  
  Return 3/4 of what was stolen to get execution downgraded to life imprisonment that’s not getting away with it.
  That said, my general opposition to the death penalty does influence me here.
  
  If these fucks face a realistic prospect of getting their heads chopped off? Sure, let 'em roll those dice.

I'm against the death penalty. I have many objections to it. though if the person at hand is a billionaire all but one of my objections disappear.
the one remaining is that I'd rather not have the government have the power to kill its citizens. so I'm willing to accept life sentences and forfeiture of all assets instead. mind that the crime I'm talking about here is being a billionaire.

I'm fundamentally against capital punishment. This could be an acceptable exception though.
Eat the rich!
- So not fundamentally, then.
  
  It's okay, billionaires aren't real people.

We now have precedent y'all

These god-damn violent tankies. Vietnam should have just fined her a much smaller amount than the corrupt practices made them, like how the West handles corrupt oligarchs.
- Seriously. If she was born in the West, she'd be on the cover of Forbes and taking photos next to celebs.
  
  No... A closer comparison shows that she would be like Sam Bankman-Fried with a 25 year sentence and ordered to repay $11 billion. Although she probably would end up on a cover of Forbes.
- Nice false dichotomy.
  
  It's sarcasm

Ban wealth hoarding.

This is the right way to deal with these ghouls.

Gonna need a really good "Go Fund Me"

She's a real estate profiteering billionaire who conned regular people out of their savings. I say let her pay 100% back and then fetch the guillotine.
- So make it a one time only thing then? Next billionaire you have in the dock will know you can’t be trusted to keep your word (“return the money and your life will be spared“) and so will have zero reason to cooperate.
  
  Nobody said it had to be in the order mentioned.
- I like this direction. Let’s do the rest of the billionaires.
- Nah, gotta go higher than what they stole. 300% should be minimum.
- That just sounds like every landlord I've lived under. I agree.

Cries in American

Very cool

My personal take on the death penalty is a bit more nuanced than most people’s, in that I support it for desk-perpetrators who commit crimes against international humanitarian law (crimes against humanity, starting a war of aggression, …) or dismantle/overthrow democracies. Desk perpetrator here means that the person cannot just participate in physical action but has to be a decision maker using institutional power. This should ideally be handed out by the ICC and no other court.
If I use this model, it tells me that the death penalty here is not justified: I’m not convinced that the bank she led had enough power to qualify as giving her sufficient institutional power to qualify and even if it did, theft and bribery are not crimes against humanity.
But yeah, I’m not going to cry if they go through with it anyways.
- This should ideally be handed out by the ICC and no other court.
  The main problem with any type of capital punishment is that it relies on an unbiased court system with reaching powers. The ICC has a pretty well established history of really only being able to prosecute criminals from impoverished nations.
  If the ICC did execute war criminals, it would be an "international" court that almost exclusively executed people of color.
  
  Obviously I believe that the rome statute needs to be signifiantly extended and the ICC should for starters receive flat out universal jurisdiction: A big reason for why so few western people have been charged at it (though: Netanjahu and Puttler are now on the list!) is that a lot of the stuff that could be charged at it happened between nations that were not members of the ICC, meaning that it lacked jurisdiction. Now obviously all the responsible government-members of the “coalition of the willing” should be charged for the crime of aggression, and it is extremely disappointing that they aren’t, but since then the fact of the matter is that most of the rich states that are members have reasonably functional criminal justice systems and largely refrained from severe enough crimes that they would fall under ICC-jurisdiction.
  Also: Even today you can also turn it around and say that it first and foremost gives justice to victims of color. Which is arguably much more important than the skin-color distribution of the genocidal trash that the convict! On that note, it bears mentioning that there is no right to get away with crimes just because others do!

Do they offer this deal to regular, desperate thieves or just billionaires?
- Do you mean the deal to avoid the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment, or a reduced sentence for returning the stolen goods?
  If it is the former, I kinda doubt that a normal thief is looking at the death penalty. If it is the latter, I wouldn't see a reason that they wouldn't. Even in the capital of cruel and unusual punishments, Saudi Arabia, followed closely by the US, they don't deny a lesser sentence when restitution is an option.
- everyone in government and in business here in vietnam is stealing and scamming. everyone knows it, and it's done openly. you only get "caught" when someone important doesn't like you anymore.

Oooh can we bring this system to the US?

This thread in a nutshell:
I'm against the death penalty, but/except/unless...
Well, then you're not against it, are you? People who are pro death penalty also have their limits from which point forward they believe death penalty to be justifiable. If you have an exception, you are pro-death penalty.
And to all the "revolutionaries" in these comments:
My Disillusionment in Russia, by Emma Goldman (Afterword):
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. (...) All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. (...) Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. (...)
No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. (...) It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society. It is not a mere reformer, patching up some social evils; not a mere changer of forms and institutions; not only a re-distributor of social well-being. It is all that, yet more, much more. (...)
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.
If you are a leftist that imagines/wishes a future with no government oppression, sponsored killing, and violence; and if you claim to be pro rehabilitation instead of punishment, you should not be celebrating capital punishment.
- Leftist with lofty goals still have to settle - This is the real world, and far from an idealized utopia. We can step into the light while still recognizing we're walking in the shade. Pro-rehabilitation folks still can believe that not all people can be rehabilitated. Capital punishment may sometimes be the only fitting remedy for civilization, if not just for the punished. There will always be evil in the world who aren't capable of rehabilitation without some form of violence and punishment - Some crimes and criminals are beyond what the sane and just can fathom.
  
  Pro-rehabilitation folks still can believe that not all people can be rehabilitated.
  If we were talking hypotheticals I might agree, but like you said this is the real world and a question remains: who decides who is incapable of rehabilitation? People who have committed murder (which I personally would classify as the worst type of crime - taking away someone's entire life) have been rehabilitated before, and completely changed their lives and become productive members of society. Plus, the same goal could be achieved with permanent incarceration, and at least then they have a chance of being released if we ever find there was a miscarriage of justice.
  Some crimes and criminals are beyond what the sane and just can fathom.
  But who gets to decide who that? Who are the "sane and just" who will draw the line? In Texas, USA, the "sane and just" decided you should get the death penalty if you murder a "peace officer". And off course by "peace officer" we know they mean the type of people who kill children and people's dogs; but if anyone were to kill one in self-defence a court would probably still convict them of murder.
- Tell me about your view on abortion. Not okay from conception or okay until 18 years of age? What a bullshit false dichotomy. It is possible to say I support something to this point. That doesn’t make you pro this or anti that. Nuance does exist.
  
  Did they mention abortion before the edit?
  
  It's not called a false dichotomy; it's called taking a firm stance, and speaking the language properly and clearly.
  Pro-lifers think abortion is bad at any point; pro-~~lifers~~ choicers are people who think abortion is okay to a certain point. People who are pro capital punishment only want it in certain scenarios; people who are anti capital punishment don't want it at all.
  If you say you are "pro capital punishment in certain scenarios", then you support the death sentence; end of. Saying you're "anti but (...)" is like saying "I'm anti-abortion/pro-life except for the first 3 months or in special circumstances".
  That doesn’t make you pro this or anti that.
  Then don't claim to be anti this or that when you're not? I was quite specific in that I was talking to people who say they are "anti" when they are not.
- Any Communist knows that this future is not possible until money is no longer a necessity. As long as money exists, there will be those that exploit it to control and oppress those with less than. Capital punishment is necessary to end this exploitation. That being said, they're giving her a choice, pay back $9 billion or die. Pretty simple. She has an opportunity to not die.
  
  Any Communist knows that this future is not possible until money is no longer a necessity.
  We make money a necessity, and so no, "any communist" doesn't know that because it isn't true. You clearly have a very limited and ignorant view of communism and communists. The person I quoted was an anarchist-communist, and I feel like "any communist" should know that.
  That being said, they’re giving her a choice, pay back $9 billion or die. Pretty simple. She has an opportunity to not die.
  Unless I'm missing something: they are the state, they can just seize her assets and put her in prison, there's no reason for killing.

Common Vietnam w

If only all "tycoons" could face execution...

Sooo, is a cheque okay?
- That actually is how they would spell it in English in Vietnam, huh?
  
  I'd suppose that they would have learned English, yes.

Mamma, what did you bring me to save me from the gallows pole?
- Zeppelin?
  
  Lead Belly and likely someone before him too

The power and character of a Socialist system.

I dont get it. If you kill them you get the money anyway, right?
- If it's hidden or off-shore, probably not.
  
  Ah, good point.

Infinity Pool comes to mind.

I guess that it's not death penalty if she fan ay for it. The only way you can scare these criminals is this

🍽

based
- Eat the rich. They are the enemy.

If they're willing to not kill this person, then don't, she's no use to anyone dead. Confiscate everything she has, and garnish all her future earnings. How can she pay her debt if they kill her?
- To send a message that you do not fuck with millions of people.
  The death penalty as deterence doesn't work if your intended group are impoverished, desperate people, but I am confident that it will work if it is the super rich. Historically only the poor where executed for stealing stuff, the wealthy had safeguards for their modes of theft. This needs to be fully reversed.
  
  It doesn't act as a deterant. Many studies back this up. Your confidance is mispleced and simply reflects your violent personality.

I'm so fucking poor I hate it.

171 comments