Vietnam's "blazing furnace" crackdown on corruption has netted more offenders with the chairman of its top soft drinks company handed an eight-year sentence for fraud on Thursday, state media reported.
The People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City found Tran Qui Thanh, 71, guilty of masterminding a loans scam from 2019 to 2020 in which investors were robbed of assets they had put up for collateral, even after they had paid back the money with interest.
Thanh is chairman of the Tan Hiep Phat drinks company. His daughter Tran Uyen Phuong, 43, the company’s deputy CEO, was sentenced to four years in prison. His youngest daughter, Tran Ngoc Bich, 40, was handed a suspended three-year prison sentence.
This month, the same court sentenced Truong My Lan, chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat, to death for masterminding a US$27 billion fraud, Vietnam’s biggest.
The Communist Party has launched a crackdown on corruption in which thousands of people, including regional and national government officials and senior business leaders, have faced accusations.
Last month, President Vo Van Thuong was forced to resign to take responsibility for a graft scandal involving regional government officials during his tenure as party secretary of Quang Ngai province between 2011 and 2014.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.