Advertisement
Thousands of Vietnamese lament life savings lost in nation’s largest financial scam
- A total of 42,000 victims have seen their savings and investments in SCB evaporate after the bank was embroiled in a US$12.5 billion fraud
- Vietnamese banks are vulnerable to fraud due to complex rules applicable to their operations, financial experts say
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
2
For many years, Kim Lien, a food stallholder in Ho Chi Minh City, served countless bowls of tofu soup and was able to squirrel away US$25,000 of her earnings.
But the 67-year-old watched her life savings vanish after she was persuaded by a bank employee to invest the amount into bonds that she barely understood.
The bank was the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), a now notorious institution embroiled in Vietnam’s biggest financial scandal. SCB’s funds have been plundered by real estate tycoon Truong My Lan and it is staying afloat only because of an injection totalling billions of dollars by the central bank.
Lan, 67, was sentenced to death on April 11 for her role in embezzling US$12.5 billion in a complex bond fraud channelled through hundreds of shell companies over 10 years.
Lien and 42,000 other victims have paid a huge price for trusting SCB with their investments.
“I just wanted to save my money at the bank. They told me about flexible savings that later on I know was a bond,” Lien told This Week in Asia. “All the bank officials were scammers. They stole my money.”
Advertisement