Van Thinh Phat chairwoman's bank fraud disappeared $4.5B

The sum, a combination of VND108 trillion ($4.48 billion) and $14.7 million, was the estimated value of various withdrawals that Lan had made at SCB between February 2019 and September 2022, according to the testimony of her driver Bui Van Dung and assistant Tran Thi Hoang Uyen.

They revealed these estimated figures to investigators from the Ministry of Public Security.

Police have identified Lan as the alleged mastermind who controlled the bank and thousands of companies to obtain loans on demand.

Whenever Lan needed cash, she would tell SCB leaders to issue the money to her as loans, and often the loans were disbursed even before the paperwork was completed.

The money would then be transported by Dung to either Lan’s home in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 3, or to Van Thinh Phat headquarters in District 1.

Either Dung or Uyen would then move the cash to addresses given by Lan. They were not allowed to make any record of these transactions, and investigators have yet to say where the money eventually wound up.

Lan held a 91.5% stake in the bank at the highest point sometime over the last 10 years, but the shares were always registered under different individuals’ names, which allowed Lan to control them without raising suspicion.

Devil in the details

To avoid raising suspicion when taking loans, Lan registered the loans under the names of 875 different companies and individuals.

All these proxy loan takers have told police that they only signed the papers under Lan’s orders, and they never received any money. They were surprised to learn about the big debts they had at the bank when talking to investigators.

A total of 1,284 loans were registered under the names of these people and companies, and Lan used different versions of collateral to obtain them. In many cases, she falsified their values many times over to take out substantial loans.

For example, she used property units at the residential complex Saigon Peninsula in District 7 as collateral she valued at VND584.4 trillion, when in fact the real value has been estimated at VND22 trillion, or 3.7% of the stated amount, according to investigators.

She also swapped collaterals back and forth for new loans, in some cases up to 12 times.

The total value of the different collaterals she had used was VND108 trillion at the time of the investigation, even though on the books they were valued nearly five times that at VND487 trillion.

Lan and her accomplices’ illegal withdrawals caused VND500 trillion in losses at SCB, police said. After SCB faced a run in October 2022, the central bank put the private lender under special control to limit negative impacts on it and credit institutions in general.

The Ministry of Public Security recommended last week that Lan be charged with a variety of crimes, including bribery, violating banking regulations, and embezzlement.

Eighty-five other people were included in the recommendation for similar alleged crimes and appropriation of property via abuse of trust.

Lan was arrested last October for alleged fraud related to issuance and trading of bonds worth trillions of dong (VND1 trillion = $41.87 million).