On April 1, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Procuracy (Procuracy) responded to the defense of the lawyer, the additional self-defense of the defendant Truong My Lan and 85 defendants; the person protecting the rights of the victims, and the people involved in the case of violations that occurred at Van Thinh Phat Group and Saigon Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SCB).
The prosecutors will answer 8 groups of questions raised by lawyers and defendants during the process of defending and protecting rights.
The representative of the Procuratorate, who holds the right to prosecute in court, expressed his agreement with the opinion of lawyer Phan Trung Hoai, when the lawyer said that "where there is litigation, there is exoneration". Because, in addition to charging, the Procuracy also exonerated by finding mitigating circumstances, presuming innocence and in principle benefiting the defendants.
In addition, the Inspection Team stated that it would receive all opinions from lawyers, study and evaluate them throughout the process of resolving the case. Thereby, the Procuracy would divide the issues into groups to respond to the lawyers and defendants.
The group assessed the consequences of the damage in the case. The lawyer said that the prosecution agency needs to request an appraisal in criminal proceedings regarding the consequences of the case. According to the Procuracy, Article 85 and Article 88 of the Criminal Procedure Code stipulate that appraisal in criminal proceedings is not a mandatory requirement, and the prosecution agency can apply other measures. In this case, the Procuracy did not base on the re-appraisal of Hoang Quan Valuation Company, but based on the testimony and evidence in the case file to determine the damage to be more than 667,000 billion VND.
Defendant Truong My Lan is quite tired after 4 weeks of trial.
However, SCB is managing many of Truong My Lan's collateral assets to ensure recovery of damages, so to ensure the principle of benefiting the defendant, excluding part of the consequences of the defendants when considering the criminal responsibility of each defendant, the Procuracy takes the total damage minus the collateral assets.
According to the lawyer's proposal, the damage should be calculated by the method of outstanding debt minus the value of collateral for each loan. The prosecutor stated that this method is only applicable to normal credit activities, and will be applied when disputes arise. However, in this case, the nature of the credit contract is to appropriate SCB's money, and the placement of collateral in each loan is just a means of committing a crime. These collaterals can then be withdrawn and inserted continuously according to Truong My Lan's instructions.
From the lawyer’s point of view, the bank should waive interest for the defendants. According to the Procuracy, from the defendants’ criminal acts, SCB incurred a special debt to the State Bank (SBV) so that SCB could have the principal and interest to pay to customers. Therefore, the indictment forcing the defendants to pay the principal and interest is appropriate.
The group of issues applied two charges of "violating lending regulations in credit activities" and "embezzlement of property" to the defendant Truong My Lan. The lawyer said that Truong My Lan's criminal acts during the 10 years (from January 1, 2012 to the time of prosecution in October 2022) were similar, with the same method of crime, but the prosecution agency prosecuted and charged Lan with two charges, which aggravated the defendant's situation.
In response, the Procuracy stated that the defendant Lan's criminal act was essentially appropriating SCB's money. According to Article 8 of the Penal Code, "crime is an act dangerous to society". Therefore, the acts of Truong My Lan and her accomplices over the past 10 years were divided into two stages. That is, the criminal acts occurred before January 1, 2018, and were handled according to the corresponding provision, Article 179, "violating regulations on lending in the operations of credit institutions".
In addition, according to the Procuracy, from January 1, 2018, the 2015 Penal Code (amended and supplemented in 2017) has stipulated the crime of embezzlement of property with non-state enterprises, and then there are provisions guiding criminal acts committed from 0:00 on January 1, 2018, will be handled according to the new Penal Code, so the acts of Lan and her accomplices occurring from 0:00 on January 1, 2018 have committed the crime of embezzlement of property.
The prosecutor confirmed that Truong My Lan was the subject of the crime of embezzlement of property.
The problem group Truong My Lan did not admit to controlling and operating SCB to embezzle assets . The lawyer said that Truong My Lan was not the subject of the crime of embezzlement of assets, because the Board of Directors (BOD) decided all activities of SCB.
In response, the Procuracy said that the new Board of Directors' decision on all activities of SCB was not in accordance with the Law on Enterprises, the Law on Credit Institutions, and the documents, evidence, and results of the public examination at the trial.
The indictment of the Procuracy concluded that Truong My Lan controlled and managed all activities of SCB, based on evidence: investigation documents confirmed that Truong My Lan acquired, owned, controlled, and had the right to decide on all shares accounting for over 91.5%.
At the same time, the testimony of defendant Ta Chieu Trung showed that Truong My Lan assigned Ta Chieu Trung to monitor SCB shares owned by and related to defendant Truong My Lan from the time of merger until the prosecution of the case, all changes in SCB shares must follow SCB's instructions. The money to buy Ta Chieu Trung's shares came from Truong My Lan and Van Thinh Phat.
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