HANOI: A court in Vietnam handed the death sentence on Thursday to real estate tycoon Truong My Lan for her role in a 304-trillion-dong financial fraud, the country's biggest on record, state media said.
"We will keep fighting to see what we can do," a family member told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Before the verdict he had said Lan would appeal against the sentence. It was not immediately clear how Lan had pleaded, though state media has quoted prosecutors as saying she not pleaded guilty.The Thanh Nien newspaper said 84 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from probation for three years to life imprisonment.
Vietnam's graft crackdown, dubbed "Blazing Furnace", has seen hundreds of senior state officials and high-profile business executives prosecuted or forced to step down.