Not long ago, Vietnam's richest woman, Zhang Meilan, was sentenced to death, and thus the two-year financial fraud case came to an end.
Zhang Meilan's alleged crimes include illegal financing, bribery, and violation of loan regulations, involving fraud of about US$1.25 million, equivalent to RMB 90 billion.
Don't look at this amount compared to Evergrande Boss Xu's 2 trillion yuan, it is just a drizzle, but in Vietnam it is already equivalent to 6% of the national GDP in 2023.
In addition, 90 defendants and 42,000 victims were involved in the case, with 2,500 documents and 6 tons of documents in 104 boxes.
What's even more mysterious is that Zhang Meilan claimed to have hidden $24 billion in gold in the sea, triggering a gold rush and instantly adding a lot of "One Piece".
How did Zhang Meilan build a business empire on her own, muddying the entire country's economy?
This time, why did Vietnam go on a killing spree?
Speaking of Zhang Meilan, her ancestors are not native Vietnamese, and she has a trace of Chinese blood.
During the Guangxu period, Zhang Meilan's great-grandfather immigrated his family from Shantou Haojiang to Saigon at that time, which is now Ho Chi Minh City.
After that, the generations went into business and started a small business.
Zhang Meilan was born on October 13, 1956, and has shown more business acumen than her ancestors for three generations since she was a child.
During her studies, Zhang Meilan set up a stall with her mother to sell imported cosmetics, and she secretly took the cosmetics to the school to sell them to make a small profit.
However, Truong My Lan's business talent was useless in economically backward Vietnam, and it was not until 1986, when Nguyen Van Linh came to power and began to copy China's opening policy, that Truong My Lanh's career was launched.
It was at that time that Zhang Meilan met the noble person in her life - Zhu Liji.
Mr. Chu, a native of Hong Kong, was in the beer business in Vietnam at the time, and the two met and worked together to expand Ms. Cheung's business in Vietnam.
In 1991, at the age of 35, Zhang Meilan established VTP Group to sell Korean cosmetics, which was also the first private enterprise in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
With keen business insight and unique marketing strategies, Chang Mei Lan successfully introduced Korean cosmetics to the Vietnamese market and quickly occupied market share.
In 1993, Zhang Meilan and Zhu Liji got married.
Zhu Liji introduced LG's business to Zhang Meilan through his connections, which made VTP Group earn a lot of money.
Since then, Zhang Meilan has tasted the sweetness of making money and expanded her ambitions, and VTP Group has begun to get involved in catering, real estate and other fields.
In 2004, Truong My Lan created a new benchmark for luxury hotels in Vietnam - Windsor Hotel.
This five-star hotel not only hosted the Oktoberfest in Germany in 2005, but also successfully hosted the APEC summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) in 2006.
Another masterpiece of Truong My Lan is Times Square in Ho Chi Minh City.
Times Square is a comprehensive commercial center in Ho Chi Minh City's CBD, with a monthly rent of about US$300, which makes Truong My Lan a lot of money.
At the same time, Zhang Meilan also saw the possibility of the future of real estate and set her sights on Hong Kong real estate.
In 2006, Zhang Meilan spent 800 million Hong Kong dollars to buy a number of luxury houses developed by Sun Hung Kai Properties, and earned 100 million yuan in one year.
As the business continues to grow, Zhang Meilan realizes that the current business model can no longer match the increasingly diversified market demand.
In 2007, VTP Group established VTP Investment Group and Anton Investment Group with US$560 million and US$390 million respectively, further expanding the company's business scope and investment areas.
So far, Zhang Meilan's business empire has covered many fields such as commerce, catering, real estate, etc., with as many as 1,000 subsidiaries and joint ventures.
Most of these companies are "shell" companies that are only used to borrow money and borrow from banks.
Zhang Meilan is not only proficient in the accumulation of wealth, but also good at shaping and maintaining her own unique personal image.
She is a major taxpayer in Vietnam, and has been the top private enterprise in Vietnam for many years, and has also won the third-class labor medal.
In addition, Zhang Meilan pays great attention to fame, she is keen on philanthropy and has made a large number of donations to hospitals, nursing homes, etc.
During the epidemic in Vietnam, she donated a large number of medical and epidemic prevention materials and cash, with a total amount of nearly 80 million US dollars, and became a living bodhisattva in the hearts of the Vietnamese people.
These acts of kindness earned Truong widespread praise and respect in Vietnam, but it appears that she was only trying to cover up her unforgivable crimes.
It can be said that until 2011, the story of Truong My Lan from a small trader to the richest man in Vietnam is still an inspirational story.
It's a pity that in the second half of the story, Zhang Meilan personally rewrote the ending.
Zhang Meilan's real estate business is getting bigger and bigger, and the demand for funds has become a bottomless pit, and the formal bank loan procedure cannot meet Zhang Meilan's expansion ambitions at all.
Zhang Meilan began to plan to set up a bank that could withdraw money at any time.
Coincidentally, at this time, there are just three banks in Vietnam that need to be rectified, and Zhang Meilan took the opportunity to merge to establish the fifth largest bank in Vietnam - "Saigon Commercial Bank", just when everyone was thanking Zhang Meilan for his rescue, who would have thought that Saigon Bank would be Zhang Meilan's largest personal ATM.
Since the bank stipulates that individuals must hold less than 5% of the shares, Zhang Meilan only nominally holds 4% of the shares, but counting the shares of others, her actual shareholding ratio is as high as 91%.
With the ATM, Zhang Meilan is even more unscrupulous.
According to the Vietnam News Agency, in 2017 and 2018, Truong My Lan and her associates forged a total of 1,284 fake loans, defrauding Saigon Bank of 193.6 trillion VND (about 56.5 billion yuan).
At the same time as the fraudulent loans, Zhang Meilan bribed Vietnamese officials through special channels to carry out illegal issuance of bonds without meeting the conditions for issuing bonds.
How does Zhang Meilan operate these funds?
Every time Zhang Meilan gets the land in a prime location, she first builds luxury residences and buildings, but does not sell them immediately, but waits for the surrounding facilities to mature, and then sells them at a high price.
As a result, the bank loan cannot be repaid immediately, and the only way to raise funds is through the bank.
One link after another, which not only ensures the operation of the bank, but also ensures the continuous supply of blood to Zhang Meilan.
But after all, the bank's funds are internal operations, and if you want to have greater development, you must seek it from outside, so Zhang Meilan found Hong Kong real estate tycoon Li Ka-shing to cooperate.
At this time, Li Ka-shing was stumbling on investing in European real estate and was looking for a suitable partner to enter the Southeast Asian market.
In an investment promotion in 2022, Zhang Meilan successfully persuaded Li Ka-shing to make Cheung Kong Group officially reach a cooperation agreement with Vietnam.
Once successful, this cooperation will not only promote the rapid development of all parties' businesses, but also have a far-reaching impact on the overall economic pattern and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.
However, just as Zhang Meilan was about to make a big move, in October 2022, Zhang Meilan was arrested by the Vietnamese police on charges of financial fraud.
Since Truong My Lan took the helm of Saigon Bank, Truong My Lan has used her connections and influence in the financial community, as well as her in-depth knowledge of the inner workings of Saigon Commercial Bank, to issue more than 2,500 loans amounting to 1,066 trillion VND, equivalent to about 310 billion yuan.
These loans accounted for 93% of the entire Saigon Bank and almost 10.7% of the entire Vietnam's GDP in 2022.
With such a huge amount of money, can Truong My Lan really disrupt the entire Vietnamese economy on her own?
Looking back at Vietnam's economic development process in recent years, we can find some clues.
In 1988, the Soviet Union stopped military aid of $1 billion a year, which put Vietnam, a "military powerhouse", in a difficult situation. In order to reduce spending, Vietnam embarked on a large-scale disarmament and reduced military spending, and in two years, the army was reduced by 630,000 men.
At this time, however, a large part of the power was in the hands of Vietnamese officers, and the reduction in military spending caused discontent among the officers.
On the other hand, Vietnam began to save its decadent industry and learn from China about the market economy.
How can we solve the problem of the armed forces and at the same time develop the economy?
Vietnam came up with the idea of giving the military privileges and giving them the right to decide the direction of economic development.
To put it bluntly, it allows a certain interest relationship between the military and businessmen to make up for the reduced financial income.
This move not only captured the hearts of the military, but also gave businessmen an opportunity, and for a while, the army occupied Vietnam's major banks, airports, telecommunications, real estate and other important livelihood economies.
Those military executives became the chairman of such and such a company.
Zhang Meilan also took advantage of this to maintain a relationship with the executives of various departments.
However, once the privilege is opened, it is like a beast out of the cage, and it is not easy to take it back.
In 2004 and 2007, Vietnam's National Assembly twice proposed to ban the military from doing business, but the military unanimously opposed it.
These rich, manned, and landed officers are accustomed to glory and wealth, so why did they return to poverty overnight?
On the one hand, the army is becoming more and more difficult to govern, and on the other hand, housing prices are getting higher and higher, attracting many people to join the real estate industry, which seriously affects the livelihood of the Vietnamese people.
In the past few years, the per capita salary in Vietnam has remained at about 2,500 yuan, and the real estate agent can be more than 5 times higher.
This makes many young people flock to it, but the textile factories that are really doing business can't recruit people.
A shoe factory that was expected to hire 8,800 people only hired 65% in the end, and hundreds more quit every month.
The dismal brick-and-mortar business has made Vietnam determined to rectify the market.
In 2021, Vietnam finally launched a full-scale crackdown to enforce the Disclosure of Officials' Assets Act, which requires all officials and their families to report their assets, including those who have retired.
With the arrest of officials one by one, many real estate developers have also been brought out, the most typical of which is the New Huangming Group.
At the end of 2021, the new Hoang Minh Group won a land auction organized by Thu Thien New District in Ho Chi Minh City for a staggering VND 24.5 trillion in Tri Thiem District.
This piece of land of only 10,000 square meters was finally sold at a high price of 6.8 billion yuan, which means that 1 square meter reached 680,000 yuan.
This price is beyond the reach of Hong Kong, which is the most expensive, and immediately aroused widespread concern and doubts in the industry.
And all this is the old trick of the "empty gloves white wolf" of the new Huangming Group.
Before the auction, the New Emperor Minh Group issued 9 consecutive bonds with a total value of up to VND 10 trillion, and bought these bonds with other titles.
The group then packaged the bonds as investment derivatives to induce investors to buy them, including by promising high returns.
When the auction was successful, the new Huangming Group quietly announced that it would withdraw from the transaction, resulting in investors losing all their money.
The disturbances in the financial market quickly attracted the attention of the National Securities Commission of Vietnam, which immediately launched an investigation into the matter.
Finally, on April 5, 2022, the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam prosecuted and detained Du Anh Anh, chairman of New Huangming Group, and six related people on the grounds of "fraud and embezzlement of other people's property".
Since the revelation of the new Huang Minh incident, in order to maintain the stability of the financial market, a financial anti-corruption storm has been set off in various parts of Vietnam.
All localities have begun to conduct a comprehensive examination of the bond-issuing enterprises and severely crack down on those that have problems. The illegal financing of real estate developers has made the real estate bubble bigger and bigger.
As of the first half of 2022, housing prices in Ho Chi Minh City have increased by more than 20%, with the average price per square meter exceeding 35,000 yuan, and the price of some homes in the capital Hanoi is as high as 74%.
In October 2022, Truong My Lan was arrested on suspicion of related financial violations, along with 86 other people, including former officials of Vietnam's central bank, the General Inspection Office, and the National Audit Office.
Overnight, Saigon Bank was run on 42,000 victims.
Two years later, on April 11, 2024, Zhang Meilan was sentenced to death for several crimes, along with her husband and niece, who were sentenced to 9 and 17 years in prison, respectively.
When the verdict was issued, Zhang Meilan regretted it and cried bitterly, crying for her stupidity and for her family members who were implicated because of her.
It is a pity that the legal net has been restored, and no one can escape the punishment of the law in front of the country and the people.
Zhang Meilan's desires once drove her to constantly pursue higher status and wealth, but greed eventually led her to the point of no return.
A generation of strong business women has become prisoners, which is embarrassing.
It can only be said that it is difficult to fill the evil deeds, and they intensify their efforts to grab wealth, and in the end they can only end up in ruin.
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Resources:
Kung Fu Finance: Vietnam is on a killing spree
Coldplay Lab: The real-life version of One Piece, the richest woman in Vietnam hides $24 billion in the sea, who finds whom?
The most Chinese: embezzlement of 90 billion! The richest Chinese woman in Vietnam, planted
Author: Jin Se
Editor: Willow Leaf chatter