Truong My Lan defrauded 35,000 investors through fake bond issuances: prosecutors

In 2018 she met five top executives at Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) and made plans to issue bonds to resolve some financial difficulties the bank faced, the Supreme People’s Procuracy said.

They decided to issue the bonds through four subsidiaries of Van Thinh Phat, the company she chaired.

They created fake documents to show that the four companies had successfully raised VND30 trillion by issuing bonds to shell companies and individuals.

They then sold the bonds to eight other companies which in turn sold them to retail investors.

This meant the VND30 trillion turned into real money once investors started to buy the bonds thinking they were legitimate.

The bonds were also sold through SCB. The bank partnered with Tan Viet Securities, a company under Lan’s control, to train the nearly 2,500 employees in selling the bonds to its customers.

The money was never used for the intended purpose at the bank, and instead Lan and her accomplices diverted it for other purposes.

One of the issuers, Setra, was not qualified to issue bonds due to its losses, but it cooked its books to show profits, and its auditor, A&C, certified them despite knowing they had been falsified, the police said.

Setra chairman Tran Van Tuan and A&C deputy CEO Ly Quoc Trung have been charged with fraudulent appropriation of assets.

Lan too faces the charge in addition to money laundering and carrying out illegal cross-border financial transactions.

Thirty three others are set to face similar charges.

Lan has already been given the death penalty for causing a loss of VND677 trillion ($27 billion) to SCB, a sentence she has appealed.