A prominent Vietnamese business tycoon has been jailed for 21 years after being found guilty of defrauding stockholders of nearly $150m.
The case against Trinh Van Quyet comes amid a government crackdown on widespread corruption in Vietnam, which has seen another tycoon sentenced to death for orchestrating the country’s largest ever financial fraud.
Quyet, 48, was jailed at Hanoi People’s Court following a two-week trial that included 49 defendants who were named as accomplices, state-run VN Express reported.
The billionaire was the chairman and founder of the FLC Group, which owned Bamboo Airways and has broad real estate holdings including hotels, resorts and golf courses, among other assets.
According to the indictment, Quyet fraudulently inflated the value of the group’s general contractor subsidiary, FLC Faros, by reporting fictitious capital contributions, before taking the company public in 2016.
In the initial public offering, the company sold some 391 million shares to about 30,000 investors, defrauding them of 3.6 trillion Vietnamese dong (about $144m), according to the indictment.
Quyet’s co-defendants included multiple officials accused of being complicit in the scheme by approving and facilitating the initial public offering despite knowing of discrepancies in the figures.
All co-defendants were found guilty of various charges, with sentences ranging from probation to multiple years in prison.
Quyet’s sisters Trinh Thi Minh Hue and Trinh Thi Thuy Nga were convicted on the same charges as their brother and were jailed for 14 years and eight years respectively.
The former chairman of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, Tran Dac Sinh, deputy CEO Le Hai Tra, and former deputy CEO Tram Tuan Vu were all convicted of abuse of authority in enabling Quyet to inflate his company’s value, and were sentenced to six-and-a-half years, five years, and five-and-a-half years in prison respectively.
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Quyet’s arrest came as part of a crackdown on corruption instituted by Vietnamese authorities.
The Communist Party’s Blazing Furnace campaign began in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 that authorities began scanning the private sector. Since then, several owners of Vietnam’s fast-growing businesses have been arrested.
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The anti-corruption campaign had been the hallmark of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician who died last month at the age of 80, three days before Quyet’s trial started.
He had called corruption a grave threat to the party and vowed that the campaign would be a “blazing furnace” where no one was untouchable.
In April, real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City for orchestrating the country’s largest ever financial fraud case.
She was convicted of fraud amounting to $12.5bn – nearly 3% of Vietnam’s 2022 GDP – and for illegally controlling a major bank and allowing loans that resulted in losses of $27bn, state media reported.
Since 2016, thousands of party officials have been disciplined, including former presidents Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Vo Van Thuong and the former head of parliament Vuong Dinh Hue.
In all, eight members of the powerful Politburo were ousted on corruption allegations, compared to none between 1986 and 2016.
