HANOI: The appeal trial of a Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion will begin in November, state media said Wednesday.
Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty in April of swindling cash from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) — which prosecutors said she controlled — and sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.
Tens of thousands of people who had invested their savings in the bank lost money, shocking the communist nation and prompting rare protests from the victims.
“The High People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City has issued the decision to open an appeal trial for Truong My Lan and accomplices in the first Van Thinh Phat case on November 4,” state-controlled Tuoi Tre newspaper said, referring to the major real estate developer of which Lan was chair.
A total of 48 defendants are appealing, including Lan, and the trial is scheduled to end on November 25, the newspaper added, citing the court.
The announcement comes days after Lan was convicted of money laundering and jailed for life in a separate case.
During her first trial, Lan was found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion, but prosecutors said the total damages caused by the scam amounted to $27 billion — equivalent to around six percent of the country’s 2023 GDP.
The court ordered Lan to pay almost the entire damages sum in compensation.
Eighty-five others were also sentenced on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and violations of banking law.
They were arrested as part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite.
Between 2012 and 2022, Lan used nearly 1,300 fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned a 90 percent stake, the court found.
Her driver transported the equivalent of more than $4.4 billion in cash from SCB’s headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City to her nearby home and Van Thinh Phat’s head office, state media reported, citing the police investigation.
Vietnam tycoon’s death row appeal to begin in November
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Vietnam tycoon’s death row appeal to begin in November
- Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty in April of swindling cash and sentenced to death
- A total of 48 defendants are appealing, including Lan, and the trial is scheduled to end on November 25
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to stay in Russian control, Moscow says
“The return of the station to Russia’s nuclear sector has been a fait accompli for quite some time”
MOSCOW: Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was a Russian facility and transferring control of it to Ukraine or any other country was impossible.
The ministry also said that jointly operating the plant was not admissible as it would be impossible to properly ensure the physical and nuclear safety of the station.
It said Zaporizhzhia region, partly controlled by Russian forces, was one of four in Ukraine that had been annexed by Russia by virtue of referendums staged seven months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor and a presidential decree had formally made the station Russian property.
Western nations have dismissed the referendums as shams.
“The return of the station to Russia’s nuclear sector has been a fait accompli for quite some time,” the ministry statement said. “Transferring the Zaporizhzhia plant to the control of Ukraine or another country is impossible.”
Russian forces seized the station early in the invasion and each side has since routinely accused the other of staging attacks that endanger safety at the plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors.
Although the plant now produces no electricity, the UN’s nuclear watchdog has monitors stationed there, as it does at all Ukrainian nuclear power sites.
Ukraine demands the return of the station to its jurisdiction and rejects the 2022 annexation of its territory as illegal.
US President Donald Trump, during a phone conversation this month with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky suggested the United States could help run and possibly own Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.
Zelensky said the plants belong to the Ukrainian people. He said he and Trump had discussed potential US investment in the plant.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was a Russian facility and transferring control of it to Ukraine or any other country was impossible. (AFP/File)
Three skiers killed, fourth critically injured in Canada avalanche
- The four men had just finished skiing in an alpine area on the east side of Kootenay Lake
- One group managed to race out of harm’s way
OTTAWA: Three skiers were killed and a fourth was critically injured when they were swept away in an avalanche in Canada’s westernmost province of British Columbia, police said Tuesday.
The four men had just finished skiing in an alpine area on the east side of Kootenay Lake, 700 kilometers (435 miles) east of Vancouver, in the early afternoon Monday and were waiting in a staging area below the tree line with another group when tragedy struck.
“A transport helicopter was nearing the group when the pilot observed an avalanche and sounded the siren,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
One group managed to race out of harm’s way, but the other was swept away in a wall of snow.
Three of the men — a 45-year-old man from the US state of Idaho, a 44-year-old from Whistler, British Columbia, and their 53-year-old guide from the nearby town of Kaslo — were later found dead by emergency responders.
The fourth man, 40, from Nelson, British Columbia, was critically injured.
Authorities this week warned of a high risk of avalanches in the area caused by rising spring temperatures.
China poses biggest military, cyber threat to US, intel chiefs say
- The report said China’s PLA likely planned to use large language models to create fake news and enable attack networks
- “China’s military is fielding advanced capabilities, including hypersonic weapons, stealth aircraft, advanced submarines,” Gabbard told the committee
WASHINGTON: China remains the United States’ top military and cyber threat, according to a report by US intelligence agencies published on Tuesday that said Beijing was making “steady but uneven” progress on capabilities it could use to capture Taiwan.
China has the ability to hit the United States with conventional weapons, compromise US infrastructure through cyberattacks, and target its assets in space, and also seeks to displace the US as the top AI power by 2030, the Annual Threat Assessment by the intelligence community said.
Russia, along with Iran, North Korea and China, seeks to challenge the US through deliberate campaigns to gain an advantage, with Moscow’s war in Ukraine having afforded it a “wealth of lessons regarding combat against Western weapons and intelligence in a large-scale war,” the report said.
Released ahead of testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by President Donald Trump’s intelligence chiefs, the report said China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) likely planned to use large language models to create fake news, imitate personas, and enable attack networks.
“China’s military is fielding advanced capabilities, including hypersonic weapons, stealth aircraft, advanced submarines, stronger space and cyber warfare assets and a larger arsenal of nuclear weapons,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the committee. She labeled Beijing as Washington’s “most capable strategic competitor.”
“China almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030,” the report said.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the committee that China had made only “intermittent” efforts to curtail the flow of precursor chemicals fueling the US fentanyl crisis due to its reluctance to crack down on lucrative Chinese businesses.
Trump has increased tariffs on all Chinese imports by 20 percent to punish Beijing for what he says is its failure to halt shipments of fentanyl chemicals. China denies playing a role in the crisis, which is the leading cause of US drug overdose deaths, but the issue has become a major point of friction between the Trump administration and Chinese officials.
INTELLIGENCE LEAK FUROR OVERSHADOWS HEARING
“There is nothing to prevent China ... from cracking down on fentanyl precursors,” Ratcliffe said.
China’s embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The committee hearing was overshadowed by Democratic senators grilling Ratcliffe and Gabbard over revelations that they and other top Trump officials discussed highly sensitive military plans in a Signal messaging app group that accidentally included a US journalist.
Numerous Republican senators focused their questioning on undocumented immigrants in the United States.
The intelligence report said large-scale illegal immigration had strained US infrastructure and “enabled known or suspected terrorists to cross into the United States.”
The intelligence agencies said Iran was committed to developing surrogate networks inside the US and to targeting former and current US officials.
While Iran continued to improve its domestically produced missile and UAV systems and arm a consortium of “like-minded terrorist and militant actors,” they said, the US continues to assess that Tehran “is not building a nuclear weapon.”
But US concerns about China dominated about a third of the 33-page report, which said Beijing was set to increase military and economic coercion toward Taiwan, the democratically governed island China claims as its territory.
“The PLA probably is making steady but uneven progress on capabilities it would use in an attempt to seize Taiwan and deter — and if necessary, defeat — US military intervention,” it said.
Still, it said, China faces “daunting” domestic challenges, including corruption, demographic imbalances, and fiscal and economic headwinds that could impair the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy at home.
China’s economic growth probably will continue to slow because of low consumer and investor confidence, and Chinese officials appear to be bracing for more economic friction with the US, the report said.
UN decries hike in satellite navigation system interference
- There have been warnings of increased GNSS signal disruptions since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine
- The UN agencies voiced alarm at the impact of disruptions to such systems
GENEVA: The United Nations on Tuesday urged countries to boost protections amid a marked increase in efforts to interfere with satellite navigation systems like GPS that are critical for aviation and maritime safety.
The UN’s International Telecommunication Union, its International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization jointly voiced “grave concern” at growing disruptions of so-called Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).
Amid growing geopolitical tensions, GPS and other such systems, which are used for weapons systems but also for a vast array of vital civilian applications, have increasingly been targeted.
There have been warnings of increased GNSS signal disruptions since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as amid the Middle East conflict.
The UN agencies voiced alarm at the impact of disruptions to such systems, which they pointed out are used for everything from the navigation of civil aircraft, maritime vessels and humanitarian assistance vehicles to synchronizing telecommunications networks.
They demanded countries do more to protect the systems against so-called jamming attacks, which prevent access to satellite signals, as well as spoofing, through the broadcasting of false signals that can cause GNSS receivers in vessels or aircraft to calculate erroneous positions.
“Global Navigation Satellite Systems are critical to our safety on land, at sea and in the air,” said ITU chief Doreen Bogdan-Martin.
“Member States should ensure the uninterrupted operation of these systems for everyone’s safety and the resilience of essential services that our lives depend on.”
The joint statement called on countries to enhance the protection of the critical RNSS radio-frequency band, where GNSS systems operate.
The band should be protected against “transmissions that can adversely cause harmful interference degrading, interrupting or misleading signals used for civilian and humanitarian purposes,” the statement added.
It also urged states to “reinforce resilience of the systems that rely on RNSS for navigation, positioning and timing” and to report all cases of “harmful interference.”
And it demanded they “retain sufficient conventional navigation infrastructure for contingency support in case of RNSS outages and misleading signals,” as well as to “develop mitigation techniques for loss of services.”
King Charles cancels state visit to Holy See over Pope’s health
- The British royals’ trip to the Holy See was scheduled to start on April 7, with a meeting with Pope Francis the following day
LONDON: King Charles and his wife Queen Camilla’s state visit to the Holy See has been postponed because of medical advise that suggested Pope Francis would benefit from an extended period of rest, Buckingham Palace said on Tuesday.
The British royals’ trip to the Holy See was scheduled to start on April 7, with a meeting with Pope Francis the following day. Their subsequent trip to Italy is set to continue.
“Their majesties send the pope their best wishes for his convalescence and look forward to visiting him in the Holy See, once he has recovered,” the palace statement said.
