The court found she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44 billion (£34.5 billion).

Of that prosecutors say $27 billion was misappropriated, and $12 billion was judged to have been embezzled, the most serious financial crime for which she was sentenced to death.

However, the law in Vietnam states that if she can pay back 75% of what she took, her sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

…

“The total value of her holdings actually exceeds the required compensation amount,” lawyer Nguyen Huy Thiep told the BBC.

“However, these require time and effort to sell, as many of the assets are real estate and take time to liquidate.

I’m conflicted on this one. State-sanctioned murder is never appropriate; that’s not what I’m conflicted about. This shouldn’t be happening, and if the state really does care about minimizing damage rather than retribution (the death penalty does not deter crime), they shouldn’t be putting a ticking clock on her; as her attorneys noted, these assets aren’t exactly liquid, and getting the most value from them takes time. If they make her sell them off in a fire sale, they’re likely to see a fraction of what they would have had before.

What I’m conflicted about is how long a sentence like this should even be. Prison should be primarily about rehabilitation and preventing harm during said rehabilitation and then secondarily as a way to deter crime. She hurt way more innocent people than even a murderer does, and it shows a disgusting selfishness. Yet here, rehabilitation barely plays into it, because even if she’s a massive piece of shit, a government like Vietnam’s has a ton of power to strip her of her ability to ever even touch these markets again. So beyond just basic counseling, I would see the role of a prison sentence exclusively as a deterrent for other people wanting to try something similar. Is a life sentence therefore justified? I don’t think so; I think that sort of Norwegian model of “no life sentences, but we can reevaluate when your sentence is up if the crime is serious enough” is the most serious punishment warranted for basically any crime.

I honestly don’t know. 20 years?

c/aboringdystopia