Trương Mỹ Lan said she thought about the situation where her husband and biological grandson were also falling into a legal circle like adding salt to the wound, unable to speak, that she feared she would not have the opportunity to meet relatives to eat together anymore. When the whole family has fallen apart, each person going their own way after a tiring day leaving the court for prison, she looked out the window to see loved ones waving from the street or through the TV screen to see her husband, grandson, or relatives. Just thinking or witnessing that alone shattered her heart, perhaps the last words are the most truthful, the most heartbreaking, and the most painful when one's life is about to take a different turn.
People often say that men cry when the pain has reached the bottom, making them unable to hold back anymore. Although spoken in English and heard through translation, Trương Mỹ Lan's husband, defendant Chu Lập Cơ, somewhat felt the tragedy of his family, mostly speaking about his wife. He said he wanted to apologize to his wife for leaving her alone during the long business journey, "If I had stood by my wife more back then, preventing her, she would not have to face this situation." Yes, if only there were countless "ifs."
If Trương Mỹ Lan and her accomplices did not collaborate to turn a bank into their own money storage, taking out money as they pleased. If bank inspectors were not blinded by money, not turning a blind eye to the collapse of a bank and the terrible consequences for the economy and hundreds of thousands of lives, then over 1 million billion dong would not have been withdrawn from SCB. That amount is equivalent to 10.7% of Vietnam's GDP in 2022, meaning more than 1/10 of the value of goods produced by the entire Vietnam in 2022 would not have completely lost liquidity, causing damage of 415 billion dong.
The embezzled amount is so large that it is equivalent to the total assets of the five richest people in Vietnam combined, about 13.2 billion US dollars. If converted into 500,000 VND banknotes, it could fill about 840 My Dinh National Stadiums, so more than 42,000 investors who bought bonds from the Vạn Thịnh Phát ecosystem did not have to suffer bitter consequences. They face the risk of losing everything, including those who used their retirement savings or borrowed money to buy bonds, while the State Bank did not strain itself by all means to lend a huge amount of money to SCB to pay the people back without knowing when it will be recovered. This huge amount of money should have been used for many purposes for our future generations.
Yes, if Trương Mỹ Lan knew how to restrain herself from the money trap, knew when to stop before the consequences became too serious, she would have had the opportunity to start over, reunite with her family, or at least see the blue sky. But "if only" does not exist. Everyone wants to get rich, but getting rich honestly takes time and effort. How many years would an average person have to work to make 1 million billion dong? Taking the current average income per capita in Vietnam, which is nearly 102 million dong, an average person would have to spend nearly 10.5 million years to make that amount of money. Unlawful enrichment is much quicker, as evidenced by Trương Mỹ Lan, who had only a few specific assets before 2012, with only 60 assets out of 1169 real estate properties formed before 2012.
In other words, nearly 95% of Trương Mỹ Lan's assets were accumulated during the 10 years of crime at SCB. It is because of this magic that we have a chairman of Tân Hoàng Minh Group, who, despite owning a real estate empire, still deceived over 6600 customers to embezzle over 8600 billion dong, or former Director of Hai Phong City Police Department Đỗ Hữu Ca, who, during his 9 years in a centrally-run city, planned to embezzle 35 billion dong of fugitive money from the city's bill king Đỗ Hữu Ca had a successful career but a failed life when he ended up in the legal circle. Or businessman Nguyễn Ngọc Thủy, who owned the largest chain of English centers in Vietnam, gained fame through the Shark Tank program but still engaged in financial fraud, eventually being arrested for embezzling over 226 billion dong.
Before that, there was Trịnh Văn Quyết, chairman of the FLC empire and owner of Bamboo Airways with over 80% ownership. Trịnh Văn Quyết once surpassed billionaire Phạm Nhật Vượng to become the richest person in Vietnam, flaunting his wealth. It turned out that he quickly inflated the stock price from almost nothing to hundreds of thousands of dong per share. On a larger and more complex scale, we have the Viet A case, a typical example of group interests and collusion in corruption. While the Covid-19 pandemic threatened the health and lives of the Vietnamese people, while the State, Government, and people were striving to fight it, a group of high-ranking leaders colluded with Viet A to turn a state-owned research product into Viet A's property.
As a result, Viet A illegally produced and traded test kits nationwide at inflated prices, making huge profits and sharing up to 40% commission for selling test kits. Also related to the pandemic, we were shocked by the rescue flight scam that took advantage of the state's good humanitarian policy to repatriate Vietnamese citizens. A group of state officials colluded with businesses to inflate ticket prices to pocket billions of dong, tens of billions of dong, or hundreds of thousands of US dollars in bribes. What was once a source of pride has now become a source of pain, as the rescue flight is now associated with worms feeding on the sweat and tears, feeding on the money at the expense of human lives. But it is also worth noting that only billions of dollars can be called bottomless greed.
A street vendor sells four donuts to foreign tourists for 50,000 VND, for example. Or another person charges 200,000 VND for a small bag of apples for two Western tourists. The amount of money is insignificant, but it reflects the greedy and deceptive nature of a portion that tarnishes the image of the entire country. Greed is not entirely bad if placed within the bounds of permissible ethics. According to psychologists, greed is one of the motivations that stimulate people to strive for a goal they desire and long for.
The public opinion once stirred up before the story just because a child scored 9 points in the middle of the semester, the mother lovingly caressed her child right in the middle of the school yard to escape the crowd crazy about the parents' insatiable desire. In fact, in human nature, more or less everyone has a sense of greed, greed is not entirely bad if placed within the framework of morally permissible. According to the explanation of psychologists, greed is one of the motivations that stimulate people to strive to achieve a certain goal that they eagerly anticipate.
On the social aspect, greed is also a primitive motivation that drives socio-economic development, but if greed is not controlled and restrained, it will turn into greediness. Greediness does not come from desiring good things, but from personal selfishness and often causes harm to others or society. In every society, there are greedy people, even to the point of being blind and disregarding moral principles, surpassing all boundaries and laws. Greedy for food, greedy for money, greedy for power, greedy for status and fame, those who are manipulated by greed never stop at what they have achieved, but always have a craving to satisfy their imagined desires.
The lack of greed in some people is acceptable, but the stories of leaders taking bribes from companies worth tens of billions to those who were once renowned heroes and intellectuals are now being paid 5, 7 billion to do shady and illegal things. Even though these people may have a lot of money and can live a luxurious life, perhaps they are haunted and manipulated by the ghost of greed, causing them to lose their minds and collapse under their own feet. In her final words before the court, Truong My Lan's granddaughter, Truong Hue Van, said that after more than a year in prison, she learned valuable lessons and deeply understood the essence of life.
Truong Hue Van choked up, quoting the saying "No one bathes twice in the same river" to show that now she is soaked in all the bitterness that life has brought, and the path ahead and the remaining years will surely change Van. The ancients said, "Prohibiting greed is like prohibiting poison, prohibiting desire is like prohibiting loss," meaning that people fall because of the materialistic greed, and birds fall because of the desire for food. Countless ancient stories and evidence nowadays have proven the bottomless greed of human beings cannot escape the painful price, which is a lesson and a warning for those who still linger in their own greedy hearts.