16 December 2024 :

A Vietnamese-Canadian man, along with three accomplices, was sentenced to death on December 16, 2024 for trafficking over 100 kg of drugs into Vietnam.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court handed down the death penalty to Chu Ba Chung, 40, Truong Ngoc Mai, and Tran Kim Loan for "illegal trading of narcotics."
Another accomplice, Nguyen Vu Khai Hoang, received the same sentence for "illegal transportation of narcotics."
Two other accomplices, who were linked to Chung and Mai, were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The court determined that evidence and testimonies conclusively demonstrated the defendants' involvement in large-scale drug trafficking and transportation operations for financial gain. Despite some mitigating factors, the court deemed the severity of their crimes to warrant strict punishment.
Chung, born in Vietnam, moved to Canada with his family at the age of nine. In early 2019, he returned to Vietnam, living in various locations, including a rented apartment in Nha Trang.
He was allegedly hired by an individual named Trai to store and deliver drugs to buyers in HCMC, earning commissions of $100–200 per kilogram sold. He later recruited Mai to assist in receiving, storing, and delivering the narcotics.
Since early 2020, Chung had been receiving shipments of 5–30 kg of methamphetamine, ketamine, ecstasy, and other drugs from Trai’s network in Cambodia.
These drugs were transported to HCMC and stored at Mai’s residence.
On Sept. 15, 2022, Hoang collected a suitcase containing over 40 kg of drugs from a man at a border area in the Central Highlands. He then delivered the drugs to Mai and Chung in HCMC.
The following day, Chung instructed Mai to distribute nearly 12 kg of drugs, which she packed into three cartons for delivery in District 5. Mai was arrested on Sept. 16, 2022, during a coordinated police raid.
Subsequent searches of the residences involved in the operation uncovered over 100 kg of drugs. Prosecutors held Chung and Mai criminally responsible for the entire volume of narcotics.
Several individuals linked to the case, including Trai, remain unidentified, and authorities have yet to take further action against them.

06 March 2024 :

A court in Nghe An Province has sentenced a man to death and a woman accomplice to 20 years in prison for selling 4.3 kg of drugs.
Dang Danh Tuan, 38, and Vo Thi Hang Nga, 32, had known each other for a long time.
In June 2022 Tuan bought three kilograms of various drugs for VND300 million (US$12,175) and kept them at his mother's house in Vinh, the capital of Nghe An.
Nga had in her possession 1.3 kg of drugs.
Both were waiting for the opportunity to sell them.
On Sept. 27 that year, when a customer placed an order, the two went together with over two kilograms of drugs in a car to deliver them.
But as soon as they opened the car door and stepped out, police officers who had been lying in wait caught them red-handed.
From their confessions, the police seized the remaining two kilograms from their places.
At the trial, Tuan said he had no stable job after being released from prison, and so used the money he had saved before going to jail to buy the drugs.
He had hoped each kilogram, which cost him VND100 million, would yield a profit of VND50 million.
Nga said she turned to drug trafficking due to her family's difficult circumstances.
Tuan had previously been tried five times for drug-related offenses and thefts.
Both expressed remorse, hoping for lenient sentences so they could return to make amends and take care of their young children.
However, the court determined that they were dangerous to society and warranted the highest sentences as a deterrent and preventive measure.

23 January 2024 :

A court in Vietnam on January 22, 2024 sentenced nine people to death after being convicted of involvement in one of the country's largest drug trafficking cases in months, state media reported.
At the end of a three-day trial, a court in central Nghe An province sentenced ringleader Tran Thi Mau, 56, and eight accomplices to death.
Two others in the same drug trafficking ring were given life sentences, VNExpress newsite reported.
They were found guilty of trafficking 105 kg (231.49 lb) of methamphetamine and heroine from Laos to Vietnam from 2021 until early 2022 when the ring was busted, online newspaper VnExpress reported. Reuters could not immediately reach their lawyers for comment.
Vietnam has among the world's toughest narcotics laws, where anyone found guilty of trafficking 100 grams or more of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, or amphetamine face the death penalty.
Drug trafficking remains widespread, however, with 41,400 suspects arrested in 26,469 cases last year, up from 36,000 traffickers and 24,000 cases in 2022, according to data from the Ministry of Public Security.

03 December 2024 :

A Vietnamese court on December 3, 2024 rejected a real estate tycoon’s appeal, upholding the death sentence handed down for the embezzlement of $12bn.
The court in Ho Chi Minh City ruled against Truong My Lan’s appeal in the case, which has raised concerns over the impact on the country’s economy due to the huge sums involved.
The High People’s Court determined there was no basis to reduce Lan’s death sentence, local media reported. However, it also said that the sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment should she repay three-quarters of the money.
“The consequences Lan caused are unprecedented in the history of litigation and the amount of money embezzled is unprecedentedly large and unrecoverable,” the prosecution said at the appeal hearing, according to state-run online newspaper VietnamNet.
“The defendant’s actions have affected many aspects of society, the financial market, the economy.”
Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was sentenced to death in April for her role in what was Vietnam’s biggest financial fraud case on record.
She is convicted of orchestrating financial fraud amounting to $12bn, equalling nearly 3 percent of the country’s 2022 gross domestic product (GDP), and for illegally controlling the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB).
Her arrest in 2022 prompted a run on SCB, one of the country’s largest private banks. About 36,000 people have been identified as victims of the fraud, which shocked the communist nation and prompted rare protests.
State media cited Lan’s lawyer as saying she had many mitigating circumstances, including “having admitted guilt, showing remorse and paying back part of the amount of money embezzled”, but prosecutors said that was insufficient.
Lan still has the right to request a review under Vietnam’s cassation or retrial procedures.
The 68-year-old is one of the most famous business executives and state officials jailed in the communist country’s lengthy anticorruption campaign known as “Blazing Furnace”, which has intensified since 2022, netting a number of business executives, government officials and members of the police and armed forces.

02 October 2024 :

A Hanoi court sentenced the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology’s former chief accountant to death after Nguyen Hoang was convicted of embezzling more than 152 billion dong ($6.2 million), the Vietnam government’s website reported on September 24, 2024.
Hoang was found guilty of committing theft between March 2009 and February 2023, the statement said. He hid his activities by modifying financial statements from 2009 to 2017, it added. 
The use of the death penalty for financial crimes has come under the spotlight in recent months after real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced to death in April for her role in a $12 billion fraud case. 
The latest conviction is another sign that Vietnam’s years-long anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by the late Communist Party Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong shows no sign of slowing down. The push has touched all sectors of society and the highest levels of government.
Hoang admitted to the charges against him, saying the money was spent for personal use and gambling, according to the police investigation.
Two institute directors and another former chief accountant were sentenced to between three and four years in prison for failing to act responsibly, leading to serious consequences, the statement said.

11 April 2024 :

Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced on April 11, 2024 to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said.
The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.
Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked her to compensate the bank $26.9 million.
Despite mitigating circumstances — this was a first-time offense and Lan participated in charity activities — the court attributed its harsh sentence to the seriousness of the case, saying Lan was at the helm of an orchestrated and sophisticated criminal enterprise that had serious consequences with no possibility of the money being recovered, VnExpress said.
Her actions “not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also push SCB (Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank) into a state of special control; eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State,” VnExpress quoted the judgement as saying.
Her niece, Truong Hue Van, the chief executive of Van Thinh Phat, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for aiding her aunt.
Lan and her family established the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreigners.
She had started out helping her mother, a Chinese businesswoman, to sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to state media Tien Phong.
Van Thinh Phat would grow to become one of Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in coordination with Vietnam’s central bank.
The court found that she used this approach to tap SCB for cash.
She indirectly owned more than 90% of the bank — a charge she denied — and approved thousands of loans to “ghost companies,” according to government documents. These loans then found their way back to her, state media VNExpress reported, citing the court’s findings.
She then bribed officials to cover her tracks, it added.
Former central bank official Do Thi Nhan was also sentenced on April 11 to life in prison for accepting $5.2 million in bribes.Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022. The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.
But Lan’s trial shocked the nation.
Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam’s economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to pivot their supply chains away from China.
The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard.
An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rents for mixed-use properties known in Southeast Asia as shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city center are still empty, according to state media.
In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician, said that the anti-corruption fight would “continue for the long term.”

12 February 2024 :

The President of Vietnam Vo Van Thuong on February 6, 2024 signed a decision to commute the death penalty to life in prison for five convicts.
The decision was made following recommendations from the Chief Justice of the Supreme People's Court, the Prosecutor General of the Supreme People's Procuracy, and the head of the President's Office, in accordance with constitutional and legal provisions.
By reducing the penalty for the individuals whose sentences have already taken legal effect, the President's act demonstrates the compassionate policy of the Party and State towards those who have committed grave crimes. It offers them a chance to live, repent, and rehabilitate for a chance to reintegrate into society.

24 September 2024 :

A 20-year-old man has been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 21-year-old woman who worked as an apartment manager in Hanoi.
The Hanoi People's Court on September 18, 2024 sentenced Hoang Minh Hao, a native of the northern Bac Giang Province, for "rape, murder, theft, and robbery."
Hao conceived the idea of stealing from other people to cover his expenses, as he neither attended school nor held a job.
On Feb. 16, Hao returned to Hanoi from Ha Tinh and searched for a new rental online. He found a listing posted by 21-year-old Le Thi Thuy Linh, an apartment manager, for a room on Cau Giay Street.
He arranged to view the room at 5 p.m. that evening.
After Linh opened the room's door, she sat outside in the hallway, distracted by her phone.
Taking advantage of the situation, Hao crept up behind her, strangled her, and pushed her into the room. After she lost consciousness, he raped her.
Upon realizing that Linh had died, Hao hid her body in a kitchen cupboard. He stole her phone, motorbike key, and other belongings, locked the door, and fled.

06 June 2024 :

A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced a man to death on June 4, 2024 for murdering both of his parents during a drug-induced hallucination.
The verdict from HCMC People's Court determined that Pham Phi Ho, 34, sincerely confessed, showed remorse, and had restricted behavior and cognition at the time of the crime.
The representative of the victims, Ho's older sister, had requested a commuted sentence.
However, the defendant committed the crime of murder with aggravating circumstances, thus necessitating the application of the strictest sentence, the court said.
When given the opportunity for a final statement, Ho stated that he was aware of the gravity of his crime and deeply remorseful, asking the court for a chance to return home to offer incense for his late parents.
He lived with his parents at their home in District 6 when the tragedy occurred.
On the night of Aug. 1, 2021, as his mother was sleeping, he suddenly rushed in and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife.
His father jumped in to stop him, but he turned to attack the father, killing him immediately.
His mother managed to run away but he chased after her and kept stabbing her.
Ho’s older sister, who was also in the house at that time, got out and called for help. Police arrested Ho later.
The mother was rushed to a hospital but did not survive.
Ho was then tested positive for narcotic substances. During their investigation, police determined that before, during, and after committing the crime, he was suffering psychosis due to the use of various drugs, losing the ability to perceive and control his actions.
Ho told the court that he has been using drugs since he was 16.
When the crime took place, HCMC was applying social distancing measures amid the Covid-19 pandemic, preventing him from buying drugs and using them on a frequent basis, which had affected his mental health.