in socialism rich people have way less influence to snake out of consequences. good on them.
If Vietnam has billionaires then why the f*ck were they fighting against capitalism in the Vietnam War? North Vietnam might as well have just asked to join South Vietnam and they could have skipped 20 years of wars. Looks like all they were really fighting against was democracy.
The South Vietnamese governments were all extremely repressive and pretty much openly fascist. The US pretty much didn’t care so long as they were opposed to communism (a recurring theme in US cold war foreign policy)…
So much of that was wrong. The last one was not, thanks to the USA. It was democratically elected. North Vietnam was 100x more repressive than South Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam
Under pressure from the US, they held elections for president and the legislature in 1967. The Senate election took place on 2 September 1967. The Presidential election took place on 3 September 1967
The US should really be congratulated for not installing a fully fascist puppet government that one time.
Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted, which sounds great but it was 84% of those eligible to vote. Huge swathes of the population were not allowed to vote due to their political beliefs or past opposition to the government.
Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted
That was actually better than most countries.
The big picture is that the Vietnamese dictatorship did exactly the wrong thing. Creating a billionaire class proves that they ditched socialism. But they kept the dictatorship. They should have instead entrenched socialism and become a democracy. That would have been a very interesting thing to see. That they did exactly the wrong thing proves that North Vietnam’s entire reason for fighting the war was a farce.
Are they really fair elections if the communist parties, the ones with large rural support, are banned from taking part?
They were not fighting against capitalism, they were fighting for independence. They didn’t care who supported them, they just needed support. Because France was in the West, and had Western support, the only external support they could easily find was communist. So they put on the Communist hat, but they really cared about independence
The history is fascinating
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Minh
the Việt Minh established itself as the only organized anti-French and anti-Japanese resistance group.[6] The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. The United States supported France. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China. After World War II, the Việt Minh opposed the re-occupation of Vietnam by France, resulting in the Indochina War, and later opposed South Vietnam and the United States in the Vietnam War.
They were not fighting against capitalism, they were fighting for independence.
Both North Vietnam and South Vietnam gained their independence in 1954. So whatever they were fighting for in the 1960’s, it was definitely not “independence”.
The history is fascinating
Yeah, but I was talking about the Vietnam War against north and south of the 1960’s. Not the separate colonial war against France in the 1950’s.
That isn’t how they saw the situation.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdUa84NB-3eiXhRtECg8mwCr6JDwgPtty&si=yC8tKjh058A9uxZo
Here is some fun documentaries to watch
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/playlist?list=PLdUa84NB-3eiXhRtECg8mwCr6JDwgPtty&si=yC8tKjh058A9uxZo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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That isn’t how they saw the situation
“They” == North Vietnamese propaganda. The actual facts are that colonialism ended 10 full years before the US sent troops to protect South Vietnam. This was a civil war, not a colonial war. It doesn’t matter what North Vietnamese propaganda wants you to think. It matters what reality is. If all your information is coming from youtube you are definitely getting your information from the wrong sources.
Colonial powers drawing lines on maps has famously been a way to make people happy with outcomes
Doesn’t apply at all here. The only ‘border’ they were fighting over was the border between North and South Vietnam. And that border was created by North Vietnam, not by any colonialists.
The freedom to run their own country whether that’s into the ground or into prosperity its the right of the vietnamese to self govern. How you correlate colonialism and democracy as the same thing is interesting.
The freedom to run their own country whether that’s into the ground or into prosperity its the right of the vietnamese to self govern.
Huh? Both North and South Vietnam gained independence in 1954. The South Vietnamese had an elected government by 1968. North Vietnam had a dictatorship so the people couldn’t run their own country. Then North Vietnam robbed South Vietnam of the ability to run their own country.
North Vietnam was literally fighting to deny the people to run their own country. To this very day nobody in Vietnam gets to choose their own leaders. The people are not allowed to govern themselves. But South Vietnam got to elect their own leader in 1968.
How you don’t know that French colonialism ended 10 years before Americans arrived is bizarre.
Political power projection and the manuevering to hide corruption is the ‘rich’ equivalent in highly socialist systems. Smart adaptive people are not necessarily moral or ethical people, so regardless of economic system or government types, you will always have the worry of unscrupulous opportunists.
“Highly socialist” systems do not have billionaires.
Removed by mod
I really don’t know. I think for certain types of crimes, I’m ok with it. Like rapists of young children. They have zero contribution to society and are unable to be repaired. I don’t know if this crime fits that threshold. 47 billion is ridiculous.
The possibility/certainty of intentional or accidental false convictions doesn’t affect your acceptance of the state meting out permanent punishment?
If it’s marginal of course. I’m talking about the real psychopaths that either admit it or are caught on camera with witnesses.
Consider what your thresholds are for what constitutes witnesses and admissions of guilt. For example, confessing to crimes that weren’t actually performed by them, do you honor the claim anyway?
And does a group of police witnessing a suspect or conversely a group of the suspect’s friends witnessing a police officer do something heinous count?
Remember any mistakes cannot be remedied.
I am. There are some truly sick people out there. I’m talking about some one off that is in a bad situation without any evidence.
But people like Dahmer, Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, I’m ok with those going away as a message to society. I don’t think it’s unnecessarily a bad thing.
I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise but I just want you to recognize that your position is that you’re ok with “bad” people being killed as a form of punishment and mine is that ensuring that label is always appropriately applied is an impossibility.
I don’t like the thought of terrible people getting to continue to live if they’ve done irreparable harm to others, but I’m also not ok with saying that we totally need to burn THAT WITCH because Goody Constance totally witnessed them communing with the devil.
Osama/Hitler getting killed in military action - fine. An abused child/person killing their attacker - look the other way. Giving Edward Snowden lethal injection because he totally deserves it for endangering Americans - not acceptable.
Yea. It’s more like if this person can’t be studied or has no use here except to haunt the living, sure. Get rid of them. Some of them want that. Some psychos know how bad they are to society.
But then you have a lot to weigh in on. You said it shouldn’t exist at all. Which for the most part I do agree with. But there are some that I am ok with going away.
Hitler was not killed in action. He killed himself. People like Dr. Death or the rest of his inner cronies can be executed as well.
She was going to be silenced, because if she lived, more people would be exposed
I am all for billionaires facing consequences for their actions. The death penalty is still deeply immoral though. Locking financial criminals up like for example the American state did with Martin Shkreli or Sam Bankman-Fried though is completely o.K. and should happen more often.
I agree, but only if they can’t bribe their way out. A billion can hire a lot of people.
Not with their hands, feet and jaws torn off they can’t.
The death penalty is still deeply immoral though.
The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court’s way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.
It appears to be a method the courts are employing to encourage her to surrender overseas assets.
In this particular situation, that $27bn is over 5% of Vietnam’s GDP. This is a very significant hit to the nation’s financial stability and one that will likely result in substantial number of excess deaths entirely due to increased poverty. I can see the threat of execution as a method to compel repayment as necessary.
In a better world, foreign banks complicit in Truong’s 11 year long theft would cooperate to return the stolen money, thereby making this threat unnecessary. But so long as foreign financial institutions can hold a nation’s wealth hostage, all the Vietnamese state leadership can manage is to respond in kind.
Disclaimer: didn’t read the article yet.
But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone. Nobody at Saigon Commercial Bank is involved or culpable for loaning that amount to a fraudster?
I mean, when you stop and think about it, you’ll realize that it’s probably all a giant mafia, and she crossed the wrong people the wrong way. There’s no way on earth that someone can disappear 10% of a country’s GDP without anyone knowing.
There’s certainly corruption all the way to the top. Everything is controlled by one party, including the banks. Everyone knew for certain
But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone.
Right. I’m less upset by a single individual facing execution than I am not seeing a dozen other crooks lined up on the docket.
Yes the case involves over 2700 witnesses. The law in Vietnam forbid her from owning more than 5% of the bank shares. Through shell companies and other people, she owned about 90% of the bank. She then hired her own people as managers, and got them to approve loans for the shell companies she had. About 93% of the loans this bank approved were for her/her shell companies. She also had her driver withdraw the equivalent of $4billion usd, which she kept in her house (it weighed 2 tons).
as someone opposed to prison-culture, I would suggest instead forcing them to contribute to society meaningfully through acts of service while losing privileges such as running businesses, sitting on boards, and reducing their ill-gotten gains to something akin to the average income and redistributing their stolen wealth to benefit communities.
Them sitting in a cube doesn’t help society, but if they were forced to solve homelessness or else face The Cube, that would be better.
So you are telling me that we should give them housing, a stable and guaranteed job and a secure income in line with the nation average? Man, I might start thinking about stealing millions, worst it can happen, I’m better off than now. /s
are you sure? the average is sub-40k.
40k a year is very much a different amount in various parts of the world, and even of the US. Regardless, if accommodation is already taken care of, it’s not a bad amount in lots of places (just maybe not NYC or SF)
I agree. Truong My Lan could just as well, lose her assets and spend her days repaying her debts to society. You know, on a normal person’s wage, trying to make up for billions upon billions. Should be enough time.
Eighty-five others were tried with Truong My Lan
All of the defendants were found guilty.
Uh… either the scale of fraud is huge, at the level of a crime syndicate, or they are convicting some innocent people. Usually the government overcharges people to encourage confessions, leading to some people being found innocent.
Do we really think the Vietnamese prosecutors are the best in the world? Maybe the jury really hated these people.
Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.
They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.
The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank’s lending.
The scale of fraud was huge.
She was a nobody in the 80s. The Mafia wishes they were this successful.
This is only possible with a corrupt system enabling behavior like this. I can see why Prime Ministers were caught up in this.
The Vietnamese government is highly corrupt, the billionaire could probably pay them off.
I read in a separate article that basically that’s how she got to where she is. A bunch of people that took bribes over the years are also going to jail. This is supposedly the Vietnamese government trying to fight that corruption. !remindme 5years to see how it works out…
For the sake of VN and its citizens, I hope they rid all the corruption.
She can appeal still, and they are doing it as an incentive for her to return 27b. I imagine she will attempt to return a large portion, appeal and then just be given life in prison.
You know we’re living in strange times when the commies are doing something good.
Yikes
Like resisting imperial forces in their country? Helping in WW2?
Vietnam were helping in WW2? I thought they were occupied by foreign forces (I think it’s Japan) during the time?
Talking about the Russians who fought side-by-side with their Nazi pals up until Hitler decided he wanted their country too?
That’s been too long, people can’t even remember what their own government promised during their election campaign.
And “helping” is still a major understatement
I’m not sure they ascribe to any communist practices outside of their party name…
No true Communist-man, got it.
If it helps, I’m not one either. But I’ve spent time in Vietnam and I’m not sure which aspect of their society would be described as communism
the commies
Don’t kill them. Redistribute their wealth.
In this particular case, she’s hidden money overseas and the death penalty is being used to compel her to recover and return it.
Redistribute their wealth, then set their parole parameters: hold an average job in food service or retail; live in an average apartment off those wages; keep that up for a set number of years, without external assistance from any third parties.
Let them experience how the rest of us live.
Anything made in excess of that in any way is seized and applied towards repaying the fraudulent debt.
In America they would likely do time in a country club prison if they didn’t only get fined for less than they profited in the fraud.
“I sentence to you ten years, with 9 years 360 days credit for time served, and a $25 fine. Your incarceration shall consist of checking in once weekly via Zoom.”
…“which we just did. You are now free to go.”
Depends on who they defrauded. Millions of poors? That’s just a mild case of affluenza, set her loose with a big tax cut and an interest-free loan.
Yes
It kind of feels a bit weird being done officially.
“Show trial” usually means “nit a real trial and the person may be innocent”. The tone of the article is that she did the crime.
I am confused.
Has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the verdict, it’s just a different specific type of trial with a different purpose.
Thank you.
So Vietnam’s courts must not normally be open to the public?I have no idea, but I don’t follow how you got to that conclusion.
A regular trial is targeted at the judge and the jury if there is one. Most trials are long, slow, and most people wouldn’t want to watch them. The purpose is to find a verdict.
A show trial is designed to then take that verdict & the information from the first trial and repackage it in a way that appeals and is easily understood by the general public.
So it’s basically for show, or to show the proceedings to the public. A “show trial”, if you will.
cool to see white collar crime actually fucking punished, for once in my lifetime.
This is a very rare situation that almost never happens.
Normally I’d say that if you empower the state to execute a certain class of person you can look forward to the state changing that definition so that inconvenient people who did nothing wrong meet it, but I’m unlikely to be mistaken for someone who has committed 10s of billions of dollars in fraud and I can’t help but feel like maybe if just one robber baron is held responsible for the enormous suffering they cause in pursuit of an amount of wealth so vast that it can never be spent and essentially only functions as a high score then the rest will realize that there is the sharp, distinct possibility that they can be held responsible as well.
