Vietnam Auctions Convicted Tycoon’s Luxury Car, Hermès Handbags For Over $1M

A luxury Maybach car and two white Hermès handbags once owned by the imprisoned Vietnamese property developer Truong My Lan were last week sold at an auction for more than $1 million, part of an effort by Vietnamese authorities to recover funds linked to her multibillion-dollar fraud.

Lan, who headed the real estate company Van Thinh Phat, was in 2024 sentenced to death on multiple counts of bribery, violating banking regulations, and embezzlement. She was convicted of using “thousands of ghost companies” to embezzle 304 trillion dong ($12.54 billion) from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), causing total losses of $27 billion between 2012 and 2022.

While Lan’s sentence was later commuted to life in prison after Vietnam removed the death penalty for selected criminal offenses, the authorities have been spending months attempting to recover lost assets from the case.

According to a report in Vietnamese state media, three vehicles were put up for auction by the Ho Chi Minh City Asset Auction Service Center on Friday. The first was a white four-seat Maybach luxury sedan manufactured in 2011. Despite lacking its wheels, door panels, and interior flooring, the car sold for 16.65 billion dong (around $640,000) after attracting 56 bids. Two additional vehicles – a BMW and a Lexus – were also offered for sale but did not attract any bids.

The car sales came a day after a pair of rare white Hermès handbags that once belonged to Lan sold at auction for more than $500,000. One of them sold for around 2.5 billion dong ($98,000), while the second – a “white Hermès size 25 handbag featuring white diamonds on the lock and trim” – was much in demand, eventually selling for more than 11.6 billion dong ($456,000) after 119 bids.

The disgraced tycoon had asked a court to return the rare handbags, saying that she had purchased one in Italy and received the other as a gift from a Malaysian businessman and that they were “mementos” she wanted returned to her family. However, an appeal court later determined that both handbags under seizure were derived from criminal proceeds or formed from assets obtained through illegal activities, and must remain in custody to ensure enforcement of the judgment.

The bags were among 1,200 assets seized from Lan after her arrest in October 2022. Other assets included residential real estate and an agricultural processing factory in Tay Ninh province.

Lan’s trial was one of the largest corruption trials in Vietnamese history, and a landmark event in the Communist Party of Vietnam’s long-running “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign. The case involved an additional 85 defendants, including Lan’s husband and granddaughter, and the documents related to the trial reportedly weighed six tons. The trial was set to involve 2,400 witnesses and other experts, including 40 lawyers, although the conviction and sentence were handed down more than two weeks ahead of schedule in April 2024.

Lan was ordered to compensate victims and has paid more than 12 trillion dong ($455 million) to bondholders so far, according to Vietnamese government statistics cited by the AFP news agency.