this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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Summary

Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.

Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.

Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.

Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.

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[–] pyre 10 points 3 hours ago

I'm against the death penalty. I have many objections to it. though if the person at hand is a billionaire all but one of my objections disappear.

the one remaining is that I'd rather not have the government have the power to kill its citizens. so I'm willing to accept life sentences and forfeiture of all assets instead. mind that the crime I'm talking about here is being a billionaire.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

These god-damn violent tankies. Vietnam should have just fined her a much smaller amount than the corrupt practices made them, like how the West handles corrupt oligarchs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 hours ago

Seriously. If she was born in the West, she'd be on the cover of Forbes and taking photos next to celebs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 hours ago

Ban wealth hoarding.

[–] fritobugger2017 14 points 5 hours ago

Gonna need a really good "Go Fund Me"

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I don't support the death penalty, but I won't be terribly sad if a criminal billionaire gets executed by their own government.

[–] Cornelius_Wangenheim 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I fully support it for the rich and powerful just because prisons can't reliably hold them. If they're not put in the ground, they'll worm their way out of consequences eventually.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Can I ask what's the cutoff? How much money/how high of a position qualifies you for the electric chair?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Higher than you’ll ever have to worry about.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 30 minutes ago

I'm not worried lol I'm poor. I'd like a number cause if you're for death penalty, you should've thought long and hard through all the details.

Cause you know. It's about killing people.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

About tree-fiddy

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Bring this shit to the US. Chop chop.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

They defrauded 12 billion, only have to pay 9? Sounds like they just made 3 billion.

[–] captainlezbian 23 points 7 hours ago

Return 3/4 of what was stolen to get execution downgraded to life imprisonment that’s not getting away with it.

That said, my general opposition to the death penalty does influence me here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

If these fucks face a realistic prospect of getting their heads chopped off? Sure, let 'em roll those dice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I dont get it. If you kill them you get the money anyway, right?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If it's hidden or off-shore, probably not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Ah, good point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Mamma, what did you bring me to save me from the gallows pole?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Lead Belly and likely someone before him too

[–] Sam_Bass 20 points 10 hours ago

We now have precedent y'all

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser 22 points 11 hours ago (7 children)

The amount of people in here pushing for the death penalty when it's used on people they dislike is sickening...

This is a penalty that needs to be abolished, not expanded or made exceptions for.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yea, I'm against the death penalty too. This shit shouldn't be legal. It should be illegal and brutal. Like the mob takes you to the square and threatens to lynch you unless you give away the billionaire persona. The cops turn a blind eye. Total societal shame. Collapse of moral and legal order. And then afterwards, we all feel bad about it and we legislate a ban on wealth hoarding so that our society never falls to those kinds of depths ever again.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Revolutions aren't pillow fights.

[–] captainlezbian 5 points 7 hours ago

True, but they’re demands of a better world. There’s a difference between killing in a revolution and a 60 year old communist government executing an embezzler instead of giving her life in prison

[–] NateNate60 3 points 6 hours ago

The state ending someone's life for breaking its laws and then having people here who would normally condemn the use of capital punishment compare it to a revolution and call it justified just because the state in question claims to be socialist is just so uniquely Lemmy.

[–] Wogi 12 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Nonsense. I oppose the death penalty for almost all crimes. It's just too easy to render an inaccurate verdict, and you can't undo an execution.

But we don't have any doubt about billionaires. They're verifiably guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt.

I also think they should be able to avoid the death penalty by giving up their wealth and living on minimum wage for a number of years equal to the number of billions they captured and withheld from society.

[–] A7thStone 3 points 5 hours ago

Pearl clutching liberals? Not once.

[–] Dasus 26 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

You're completely right.

However, I feel like I'd make an exception for people who massively contribute to an actual existential threat to humanity. Ie billionaires. All billionaires.

I'm not saying we should kill them. I'm saying we should use the possibility of that being on the table to make them pay their taxes. The entire planet is ruined by billionaires when we could literally everyone have enough to have our basic needs met while having an economy and industry which isn't on track to make the planet uninhabitable for us, seeing as it's the only planet known to support life.

Yes, all life is important. That's why all life should be protected by making sure the planet doesn't become one huge airfryer. If while doing that a few billionaires get guillotined, I'm honestly fine with it. I'd prefer they'd just actually help people instead of being selfish assholes, but if them being selfish assholes is putting everyone else in danger, then the choice is clear, no matter your views on the death penalty. (Which as you say, shouldn't be a thing.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I dunno, reducing them to being not-billionaires and even not-millionaires would actually be a pretty just sentence IMO. I bet being reduced to a regular Joe would hurt some of them more than the death penalty

[–] Dasus 5 points 7 hours ago

What's to stop them doing it all over again, given some starter money? Usually what makes these assholes so effective is their lack of empathy. That works well in capitalism.

White collar crime needs to start getting hard time in the same prisons that proper criminals go to. That'd be a deterrent, or a motivator to fix the prison systems.

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[–] ouch 14 points 10 hours ago

Seems to be a common mindset among americans. As european I don't understand it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (4 children)

Why, though? The usual reasoning for abolishing the death penalty is the argument that we might make a mistake and mistakenly sentence innocent people to death. But what about crimes like this, where the crime is entirely on paper, fully documented, and with no risk that you're prosecuting the wrong person?

Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted with no replies. I'm asking an actual question here, if you disagree why not state your opinion?

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I think it's a valid question. I wouldn't say that the only reason for abolishing the death penalty is because we might make a mistake... that definitely factors into it, but there's more to it.

Ask yourself what purpose does it serve to put someone to death? They're already in jail/prison and no longer a threat to society. Deterrence? Is the death penalty any more of a deterrence than a life sentence?

The only purpose I can think of for the death penalty is that it's for "Revenge". It doesn't actually fix anything in of itself. It doesn't resolve disputes, it doesn't really solve anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Because we've always said that we won't make any excuses for the terror when our turn comes.

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser 1 points 3 hours ago

Can you expand on this?
Either you replied to the wrong comment, or you're clearly thinking of some context that I'm not, or it's related to some saying that I'm not familiar with.

[–] NateNate60 3 points 6 hours ago

I want to point out that this is already the standard for conviction. The finder of fact must find the accused to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt before convicting them. So from a legal perspective, everyone convicted of a crime already has been proven guilty to the highest possible standard. If there is any shred of doubt at all about the guilt of the accused, they're supposed to be acquitted. It's only possible in retrospect when new evidence emerges that exonerates the accused that it can be determined that the original guilty verdict was incorrect. You can't really "force" this evidence to emerge with any amount of policy changes. It just happens over time.

For example, witnesses lie. Maybe five years after the fact they feel bad about lying and retract their testimony. Maybe some of the investigators assigned to the case just made up some evidence to get the accused convicted in court because they just thought there was no way he could be innocent and they just needed to cook up the evidence to get them declared guilty, and they can only admit that when the statute of limitation passes. Or maybe, three years later, a convenience store manager deleting old footage happens upon a CCTV tape giving the accused an alibi. Or maybe still, the accused was actually framed and their framers only got caught ten years later doing some other crime, and it turned out that they forged the accused's signatures on those documents and used their computer to send those e-mails without their knowledge. I could go on.

So if your proposed standard is applied, it would not actually exclude anyone from execution because everyone who's been convicted has already been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.

[–] Dasus 3 points 8 hours ago

Well fuck billionaires but papers can and trials can be wrong.

Like who's to say she wasn't a patsy?

I'm not saying she was, but how would you prove beyond any doubt that she wasn't?

Probably this case is an open-and-shut case but my point is valid, I think.

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[–] poo 5 points 8 hours ago

If only all "tycoons" could face execution...

[–] phoneymouse 82 points 15 hours ago (8 children)

Two things America loves: billionaires and the death sentence. It has just never thought to combine them in this way.

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[–] wpb 5 points 10 hours ago

Common Vietnam w

[–] [email protected] 168 points 19 hours ago (14 children)

All we gotta do is sentence a handful of billionaires to death and watch the behaviour change when they realize they're not insulated from consequence anymore.

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