They are now being held at T17 Prison in Cu Chi District ahead of their trial on March 5.
Of the 86 people who will be tried, 70 are in prison, 11 are allowed to stay at home and five are in hiding.
Lan was accused of corruption, violating banking regulations and embezzlement.
Eighty-five other people were charged with similar crimes, as well as “abuse of power and position in the performance of official duties” and “irresponsibility leading to serious consequences.”
Among the accused are 45 former executives of Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), 15 former officers of the State Bank of Vietnam, three officers of the Government Inspectorate and a former officer of the National Audit Office.
The court asks the five people in hiding to surrender.
The trial is expected to last until April 29. The HCMC People’s Court summoned 2,400 people related to the case.
Authorities have been preparing for the trial over the past two months. Nearly 200 lawyers will attend the court, including five who will defend Lan.
According to prosecutors, in 2011, Lan acquired three private banks to merge with SCB, which she used as if they were her own private bank in order to finance what was in reality her own business – the real estate developer Van Thinh Phat and its ecosystem.
Although Lan did not hold direct executive power within SCB, she owned 91.5% of the lender’s shares through other individuals.
She asked SCB executives to coordinate with Van Thinh Phat’s top officials to withdraw the money from the bank via fake loan applications.
For many years, Lan repeatedly asked his accomplices to fork over the money first and complete the paperwork later.
From 2012 to 2022, Lan’s entourage took out more than 2,500 loans from SCB, with a total disbursement of more than 1 quadrillion VND ($44 billion), accounting for 93% of the total credits issued by the lender .
The remaining 7% was loaned to regular customers.
This sum is equivalent to 10.7% of Vietnam’s GDP in 2022, which stood at $409 billion. As of 2022, Lan was responsible for 1,300 unpaid loans at the bank, worth a total of VND677 trillion. The loans were classified as “uncollectible.”
Lan ordered SCB officials to disburse the loans to her companies, then she withdrew them in cash to prevent their origin from being traced.
Between February 2018 and October 2022, it submitted 916 loan applications to the bank for a total of VND545 trillion and appropriated VND304 trillion that was granted to it.
The loans carry a cumulative unpaid interest of 130,000 billion dong.
Lan’s activities caused losses of VND64.6 trillion to the bank, said prosecutors, who also accused her of paying bribes to conceal the bank’s financial situation.
She allegedly paid $5.2 million in bribes to the head of the central bank’s inspection and supervision department, Do Thi Nhan.
Lan had denied all accusations of violations at the SCB.
