ASEAN Beat | Society | Southeast Asia

Vietnam Auctions Convicted Tycoon’s Luxury Car, Hermès Handbags For Over $1M

The property developer Truong My Lan is currently serving a life sentence for masterminding Vietnam’s largest ever corruption scandal.

A luxury Maybach car and two white Hermès handbags once owned by the imprisoned Vietnamese property developer Truong My Lan were last week sold at an auction for more than $1 million, part of an effort by Vietnamese authorities to recover funds linked to her multibillion-dollar fraud.

Lan, who headed the real estate company Van Thinh Phat, was in 2024 sentenced to death on multiple counts of bribery, violating banking regulations, and embezzlement. She was convicted of using “thousands of ghost companies” to embezzle 304 trillion dong ($12.54 billion) from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), causing total losses of $27 billion between 2012 and 2022.

While Lan’s sentence was later commuted to life in prison after Vietnam removed the death penalty for selected criminal offenses, the authorities have been spending months attempting to recover lost assets from the case.

According to a report in Vietnamese state media, three vehicles were put up for auction by the Ho Chi Minh City Asset Auction Service Center on Friday. The first was a white four-seat Maybach luxury sedan manufactured in 2011. Despite lacking its wheels, door panels, and interior flooring, the car sold for 16.65 billion dong (around $640,000) after attracting 56 bids. Two additional vehicles – a BMW and a Lexus – were also offered for sale but did not attract any bids.

The car sales came a day after a pair of rare white Hermès handbags that once belonged to Lan sold at auction for more than $500,000. One of them sold for around 2.5 billion dong ($98,000), while the second – a........

© The Diplomat