A female billionaire has been sentenced to death for embezzling $44 billion from Vietnam’s bank.

Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for embezzlement.

Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for embezzlement. Truong My Lan, a Vietnamese billionaire, has been sentenced to death for embezzling from one of Vietnam’s largest banks over an 11-year period.

It was the most extraordinary trial ever conducted in Vietnam, commensurate with one of the most significant bank frauds the world has ever witnessed.

Truong My Lan received her sentence under the dignified yellow arches of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City.

The 67-year-old Vietnamese property developer was condemned to death on Thursday, marking her as one of the rare women in Vietnam to face such a fate for a white-collar crime.

According to BBC reports, the ruling underscores the staggering magnitude of the fraud.

Truong My Lan was found guilty of securing $44 billion (£35 billion) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank.

The verdict mandates her to repay $27 billion, a sum that prosecutors fear may never be recovered.

Some speculate that the imposition of the death penalty is the court’s attempt to motivate her to return at least some of the embezzled billions.

In this instance, the typically secretive communist authorities were unusually candid, providing meticulous details to the media.

As reported by BBC, approximately 2,700 individuals were summoned to provide testimony, with 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers participating in the proceedings.

The evidence, totaling 104 boxes and weighing six tonnes, was presented.

Alongside Truong My Lan, 85 other defendants stood trial, all of whom denied the charges.

“There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era,” said David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam.

“There has certainly been nothing on this scale.”

The trial marked the most riveting episode thus far in the “Blazing Furnaces” anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by Communist Party Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong.