HANOI: A pair of luxury Hermes handbags that once belonged to a jailed Vietnamese property tycoon sold at auction for more than US$500,000, state media reported, as the government seeks to recover funds linked to a US$27 billion fraud.<\/p>\n
Property developer Truong My Lan was convicted in 2024 of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), which prosecutors said she controlled.<\/p>\n
She was initially sentenced to death in one of Vietnam’s biggest corruption cases, but now faces life in prison after Hanoi abolished capital punishment for some crimes.<\/p>\n
A confiscated Hermes bag with white gemstones sold Thursday (May 21) at the Ho Chi Minh City Asset Auction Service Center for 11.6 billion Vietnamese dong (US$440,000), state media reported. A second Hermes bag sold for 2.5 billion dong (US$95,000).<\/p>\n
The disgraced tycoon had asked a court to return the rare albino Birkin bags, saying she had purchased one in Italy and received the other as a gift.<\/p>\n
They were “mementos” she wanted returned to her family, state media reported.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of people who invested their savings in Saigon Commercial Bank lost money, shocking the communist nation and prompting rare protests from the victims.<\/p>\n
Lan was ordered to compensate victims and has paid more than 12 trillion dong (US$455 million) to bondholders so far, according to a statement on the government’s website.<\/p>\n
Three cars once belonging to Lan — a Maybach, a BMW and a Lexus — are set to be auctioned Friday. – AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HANOI: A pair of luxury Hermes handbags that once belonged to a jailed Vietnamese property tycoon sold at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12919],"tags":[4482,4953,14263,14849,9512],"class_list":["post-19663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hermes","tag-auction","tag-hermes","tag-hermes-handbags","tag-jailed-tycoon-truong-my-lan","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}