The Van Thinh Phat Arrests

And an ensuing bank run

Good morning! After taking last week off from the newsletter, this has been a blockbuster stretch of days for domestic news. Friday’s free-to-read edition will be packed, so I wanted to pull out the arrests of several Van Thinh Phat Group executives and a related bank run for a subscriber-only article.

There is way too much to cover in one newsletter, and the complexity of these topics requires more space than the usual weekly recap. I’d also love to hear from any readers with insight on the matter, as it’s been hard to dig into this company.

Non-subscribers can upgrade to receive future exclusive articles for US$5/month or US$50/year below.

Just a quick bit of news: Vietnam was elected to the UN Human Rights Council for the 2023-2025 during a vote at the General Assembly yesterday.

---

The Arrests

Let’s start with the bombshell arrests at property developer Van Thinh Phat Group (VTP). On Saturday morning, the Ministry of Public Security announced that Truong My Lan, the group’s founder and chairwoman, had been arrested “for alleged fraud related to issuance and trading of bonds worth trillions of dong.” (For reference, VND1 trillion is about US$42 million.)

Three other executives were arrested under the same allegations: Truong Hue Van, CEO of Windsor Property Management (a VTP subsidiary); Nguyen Phuong Hong, an assistant at VTP; and Ho Buu Phuong, former deputy financial director of VTP and former chairwoman of Tan Viet Securities (we’ll return to that company later).

Before moving on - what is VTP?