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betterdeadthanreddit ,

You know we’re living in strange times when the commies are doing something good.

ABCDE ,

Like resisting imperial forces in their country? Helping in WW2?

RamblingPanda ,

That’s been too long, people can’t even remember what their own government promised during their election campaign.

kwomp2 ,

And “helping” is still a major understatement

cordlesslamp ,

Vietnam were helping in WW2? I thought they were occupied by foreign forces (I think it’s Japan) during the time?

ABCDE ,

Another communist state.

betterdeadthanreddit ,

Talking about the Russians who fought side-by-side with their Nazi pals up until Hitler decided he wanted their country too?

NaibofTabr ,

the commies

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/98/be/d4/98bed45b737444cc1f80069d8f4e6c81.jpg

GBU_28 ,

Yikes

sepulcher ,

Executing people who screw over investors?

betterdeadthanreddit ,

In some cases, yes. We should do the same here in the USA once the value of a person’s theft exceeds a limit based on the value of a human life. There is a number for that based on earning potential and some other factors. Give it a multiplier (maybe ten times the value of a life but that’s for bean counters to figure out) and also consider mitigating factors like we do in homicide cases. Somebody who steals enough to wipe out many lifetimes of hard, honest work may not be directly killing anyone but theft at that scale has destructive and deadly consequences.

wahming ,

I’m not sure they ascribe to any communist practices outside of their party name…

betterdeadthanreddit ,

No true Communist-man, got it.

wahming ,

If it helps, I’m not one either. But I’ve spent time in Vietnam and I’m not sure which aspect of their society would be described as communism

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think death sentences should be a thing.

JohnEdwa ,

I almost agree, as there are only very few crimes, and in absolutely certain circumstances, where I think a death sentence would be appropriate. As an example, cases like Anders Breivik.

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

Nah, he can rot in isolation. Death is just getting away with it, which is what he would’ve wanted.

JohnEdwa ,

The system in Japan is… Let’s say “interesting”. You get sentenced to death, but you might still sit in prison for years or even decades until one morning they carry it out with no warning, so you’ll live the rest of your life not knowing if each day is your last or not.

can ,

How barbaric.

Soulg ,

All executions are but yeah Japan is particularly so

aeronmelon ,

“Goodnight, inmate. Sleep well. Tomorrow I shall have to kill you.”

Kowowow ,

As you wish

refurbishedrefurbisher ,

TIL Japan still has the death sentence.

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

most countries in asia still do.

en.wikipedia.org/…/File%3ACapital_punishment_in_t…

Immersive_Matthew ,

Must be a lot less crime there then? Not.

JohnEdwa ,

Often it is, but the death penalty isn’t the only thing affecting it - if it did, USA would not be at such a high of a spot for intentional homicides () as most states have the death penalty as well.

For reference, Japan is at spot 196 out of 207 when you sort by victims per 100000 inhabitants.

Which also results in very few people getting the death penalty - just 3 people were executed in 2022, and none last year. US executed 18 and 24.

Cosmicomical ,

Wow, way to make you feel alive

Dwayne_Elizondo_Mountain_Dew_Camacho ,

Not trying to excuse his actions but read the _Early life and reports of abuse _section.

This guy is a product of a mentally ill mother who abused him. Imagine being 4 years old and your caregiver keeps telling you she wished you were dead. Not a recipe for a well balanced individual.

My point is yes, his place is in prison. But if you want to prevent other acts of this kind, social and mental services need to get better. They clearly failed in this case, more than once.

systemglitch ,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    sepulcher ,

    I agree, but not for financial crimes.

    She’s essentially being executed for screwing over, you guessed it, investors.

    That’s fucked up. I’d rather execute the investors.

    Zyrxil ,

    It’s a bank not a hedge fund. The investors would be the regular people that made deposits- you know, the victims of the fraud. So your knee jerk reaction is “investors bad” without thinking about anything?

    Rivalarrival ,

    She is one of the investors.

    Ross_audio ,

    Let’s set the sentence for executing an innocent man to, death.

    The first barrier to the death penalty is to make sure verdicts are right 100% of the time.

    After that you can begin the debate about **whether it’s moral at all.

    systemglitch ,

    You can’t be certain 100% of the time, so one has to accept there will be instances of injustice.

    Or perserve it for instances where it is 100% certain only (video evidence, tons of eyewitnesses). I don’t care which personally, but latter is preferred.

    What I don’t want is a drawn out affair where it costs more to execute them than to keep them alive.

    When people deserve to die, they should be killed with haste, so we can forget they ever existed and move on. I’m not a fan of the slow torturous rot of keeping them alive until they die of natural causes part of the justice system we have come to embrace in western society.

    To be fair, I’m focused more on other crimes than the one this article is about. But anything that would end up being the rest of a person’s life, I’m okay with just ending prematurely. I’m morally flexible in this regard.

    dojan ,
    @dojan@lemmy.world avatar

    Let’s set the sentence for executing an innocent man to, death.

    There’s no such thing as an innocent billionaire.

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

    It’s true. America’s newest billionaire is ruthless boss of the Nashville underground, Taylor Swift, leader of the Swifties cartel.

    Cosmicomical ,

    you don’t get there without being integral part of that system

    MutilationWave ,

    She didn’t get there by paying the employees of her business empire the share they deserve of the profits they generated for her. If she had, she wouldn’t be a billionaire.

    That doesn’t even touch on the issues of constant private jets around the world, owning multiple homes, etc.

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

    Shhhh. The Swifties can hear you. 🤫🤐 They’re always listening and ready to pounce.

    Coreidan ,

    Neither should billionaires

    ObviouslyNotBanana ,
    @ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

    That I agree on.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Billionaires cause infinitely more problems than death sentences.

    I think, though, that it is a simple enough affair for a billionaire to stop being a billionaire, if they are sufficiently motivated to do so.

    If we make “acquiring and retaining a billion dollars” a capital offense, the billionaires will get rid of themselves; we won’t actually have to execute anyone.

    ObviouslyNotBanana ,
    @ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

    I don’t really think we need to compare them. Death sentences shouldn’t be a thing. Neither should billionaires. Billionaires are human beings, their wealth is a systemic issue we should do something about.

    Rivalarrival ,

    I disagree. It is not a systemic issue. It is a personal failing. They lack the self control, discipline, empathy, and compassion of fully-functional people. They have no internal sense of the harm that they are causing to all of society, and the only external feedback they get is from sycophants hyping them up to commit ever increasing atrocities.

    If there is a systemic failure, it is that we treat them as ordinary decent criminals, protecting them from oppression and discrimination, while ignoring that the only oppression they have ever seen has been the oppression they have perpetrated.

    They should be treated as hostile nations, not criminal defendants.

    ObviouslyNotBanana ,
    @ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s a systemic issue in the fact that the system allows for it to happen. The system shouldn’t nurture such outcomes.

    Rivalarrival ,

    I’m not going to blame a system that works for ten thousand people for having been exploited by one person.

    I’m going to declare that one person a criminal exception, rather than rebuilding the entire system to accommodate him.

    The threat of the guillotine is the simplest solution to criminal affluence.

    AtariDump ,

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b5aac8f7-7dc6-48c4-b303-40eb0cd25544.jpeg

    WhatsThePoint ,

    In America they would likely do time in a country club prison if they didn’t only get fined for less than they profited in the fraud.

    psycho_driver ,

    The only time they would get punished at all in the US is if they fucked over other billionaires. Even then, only maybe.

    Mouselemming ,

    I bet that’s part of why she’s in this situation, rich people lost money. Lots of corrupt government officials also want the spotlight to stay on her. I mean of course in addition to the fact that she did ruin many people’s lives…

    jkrtn ,

    Depends on who they defrauded. Millions of poors? That’s just a mild case of affluenza, set her loose with a big tax cut and an interest-free loan.

    reverendsteveii ,

    “I sentence to you ten years, with 9 years 360 days credit for time served, and a $25 fine. Your incarceration shall consist of checking in once weekly via Zoom.”

    Rivalarrival ,

    …“which we just did. You are now free to go.”

    sepulcher ,

    Don’t kill them. Redistribute their wealth.

    Steak ,

    Kill them and redistribute their wealth https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/e9fdb0b9-c001-42de-a4e3-ceb7ed1e8812.gif

    Zipitydew ,

    Bingo. Both is good. Not all life is precious.

    reverendsteveii ,

    Removed by mod

    naughtyguy17 ,

    Redistribute their wealth, then set their parole parameters: hold an average job in food service or retail; live in an average apartment off those wages; keep that up for a set number of years, without external assistance from any third parties.

    Let them experience how the rest of us live.

    halcyoncmdr ,
    @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

    Anything made in excess of that in any way is seized and applied towards repaying the fraudulent debt.

    Cosmicomical ,

    Plus constant checks to verify their life style is conforming to that, and seize one fifth of their salary until the debt is paid off

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    In this particular case, she’s hidden money overseas and the death penalty is being used to compel her to recover and return it.

    Luvs2Spuj ,

    Now do the other billionaires.

    More seriously though, this is fucked up.

    Leviathan ,

    Fucked up is the amount of suffering inflicted on others is required to amass billions of dollars. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, though.

    BarrelAgedBoredom ,

    I’m not for the death penalty. She should be in prison for the rest of her life without a chance of getting out. Can’t say I don’t understand why they’re opting for the death penalty though. 44 billion is a fuckload of money. Like more than the gdp of 84 countries.

    MutilationWave ,

    It’s been widely reported that the death sentence may be a plot to get her to return the money. If she does this she may have her sentence commuted on appeal.

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    The number of Vietnamese billionaires in US dollar has dropped to five in the early months of 2024 from the previous six, reported in April 2023.. They’re already 16% of the way.

    Kalothar ,

    She can appeal still, and they are doing it as an incentive for her to return 27b. I imagine she will attempt to return a large portion, appeal and then just be given life in prison.

    KevonLooney ,

    Eighty-five others were tried with Truong My Lan

    All of the defendants were found guilty.

    Uh… either the scale of fraud is huge, at the level of a crime syndicate, or they are convicting some innocent people. Usually the government overcharges people to encourage confessions, leading to some people being found innocent.

    Do we really think the Vietnamese prosecutors are the best in the world? Maybe the jury really hated these people.

    starman2112 ,
    @starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.

    They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

    The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank’s lending.

    The scale of fraud was huge.

    KevonLooney ,

    She was a nobody in the 80s. The Mafia wishes they were this successful.

    This is only possible with a corrupt system enabling behavior like this. I can see why Prime Ministers were caught up in this.

    pineapplelover ,

    The Vietnamese government is highly corrupt, the billionaire could probably pay them off.

    KingOfTheCouch ,

    I read in a separate article that basically that’s how she got to where she is. A bunch of people that took bribes over the years are also going to jail. This is supposedly the Vietnamese government trying to fight that corruption. !remindme 5years to see how it works out…

    pineapplelover ,

    For the sake of VN and its citizens, I hope they rid all the corruption.

    merari42 ,

    I am all for billionaires facing consequences for their actions. The death penalty is still deeply immoral though. Locking financial criminals up like for example the American state did with Martin Shkreli or Sam Bankman-Fried though is completely o.K. and should happen more often.

    lurch ,

    I agree, but only if they can’t bribe their way out. A billion can hire a lot of people.

    captain_aggravated ,
    @captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Not with their hands, feet and jaws torn off they can’t.

    ThatWeirdGuy1001 ,
    @ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world avatar

    Nah fam certain people deserve gilded intestines

    modifier ,

    Is this a Game of Thrones reference? I am confuse

    ThatWeirdGuy1001 ,
    @ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world avatar

    No it’s a reference to an old story of a baron being attacked by peasants and having his gold melted down and poured down his throat.

    Pretty sure GoT got that idea from this story

    modifier ,

    Oh thanks, in that context the Baron story is way cooler.

    theacharnian ,
    @theacharnian@lemmy.ca avatar

    I agree. Truong My Lan could just as well, lose her assets and spend her days repaying her debts to society. You know, on a normal person’s wage, trying to make up for billions upon billions. Should be enough time.

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    The death penalty is still deeply immoral though.

    The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court’s way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

    It appears to be a method the courts are employing to encourage her to surrender overseas assets.

    In this particular situation, that $27bn is over 5% of Vietnam’s GDP. This is a very significant hit to the nation’s financial stability and one that will likely result in substantial number of excess deaths entirely due to increased poverty. I can see the threat of execution as a method to compel repayment as necessary.

    In a better world, foreign banks complicit in Truong’s 11 year long theft would cooperate to return the stolen money, thereby making this threat unnecessary. But so long as foreign financial institutions can hold a nation’s wealth hostage, all the Vietnamese state leadership can manage is to respond in kind.

    clutchtwopointzero ,

    5% of GDP is just absolutely insane

    InformalTrifle ,

    Disclaimer: didn’t read the article yet.

    But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone. Nobody at Saigon Commercial Bank is involved or culpable for loaning that amount to a fraudster?

    Rinox ,

    I mean, when you stop and think about it, you’ll realize that it’s probably all a giant mafia, and she crossed the wrong people the wrong way. There’s no way on earth that someone can disappear 10% of a country’s GDP without anyone knowing.

    There’s certainly corruption all the way to the top. Everything is controlled by one party, including the banks. Everyone knew for certain

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    But surely someone can’t commit such a huge fraud alone.

    Right. I’m less upset by a single individual facing execution than I am not seeing a dozen other crooks lined up on the docket.

    LustyArgonianMana ,
    @LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

    Yes the case involves over 2700 witnesses. The law in Vietnam forbid her from owning more than 5% of the bank shares. Through shell companies and other people, she owned about 90% of the bank. She then hired her own people as managers, and got them to approve loans for the shell companies she had. About 93% of the loans this bank approved were for her/her shell companies. She also had her driver withdraw the equivalent of $4billion usd, which she kept in her house (it weighed 2 tons).

    funkless_eck ,

    as someone opposed to prison-culture, I would suggest instead forcing them to contribute to society meaningfully through acts of service while losing privileges such as running businesses, sitting on boards, and reducing their ill-gotten gains to something akin to the average income and redistributing their stolen wealth to benefit communities.

    Them sitting in a cube doesn’t help society, but if they were forced to solve homelessness or else face The Cube, that would be better.

    Rinox ,

    So you are telling me that we should give them housing, a stable and guaranteed job and a secure income in line with the nation average? Man, I might start thinking about stealing millions, worst it can happen, I’m better off than now. /s

    funkless_eck ,

    are you sure? the average is sub-40k.

    Rinox ,

    40k a year is very much a different amount in various parts of the world, and even of the US. Regardless, if accommodation is already taken care of, it’s not a bad amount in lots of places (just maybe not NYC or SF)

    PutangInaMo ,

    I say turn them over to the Mechanicum and have yourself a new servitor loyal to the empirium.

    AutistoMephisto ,
    @AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world avatar

    They were arrested for ripping off people who were already rich. Nobody cares if a billion poors get ripped off.

    theotherverion ,

    Death penalty should not exist.

    GladiusB ,
    @GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

    I really don’t know. I think for certain types of crimes, I’m ok with it. Like rapists of young children. They have zero contribution to society and are unable to be repaired. I don’t know if this crime fits that threshold. 47 billion is ridiculous.

    DABDA ,

    The possibility/certainty of intentional or accidental false convictions doesn’t affect your acceptance of the state meting out permanent punishment?

    GladiusB ,
    @GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

    If it’s marginal of course. I’m talking about the real psychopaths that either admit it or are caught on camera with witnesses.

    DABDA ,

    Consider what your thresholds are for what constitutes witnesses and admissions of guilt. For example, confessing to crimes that weren’t actually performed by them, do you honor the claim anyway?

    And does a group of police witnessing a suspect or conversely a group of the suspect’s friends witnessing a police officer do something heinous count?

    Remember any mistakes cannot be remedied.

    GladiusB ,
    @GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

    I am. There are some truly sick people out there. I’m talking about some one off that is in a bad situation without any evidence.

    But people like Dahmer, Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, I’m ok with those going away as a message to society. I don’t think it’s unnecessarily a bad thing.

    DABDA ,

    I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise but I just want you to recognize that your position is that you’re ok with “bad” people being killed as a form of punishment and mine is that ensuring that label is always appropriately applied is an impossibility.

    I don’t like the thought of terrible people getting to continue to live if they’ve done irreparable harm to others, but I’m also not ok with saying that we totally need to burn THAT WITCH because Goody Constance totally witnessed them communing with the devil.

    Osama/Hitler getting killed in military action - fine. An abused child/person killing their attacker - look the other way. Giving Edward Snowden lethal injection because he totally deserves it for endangering Americans - not acceptable.

    GladiusB ,
    @GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

    Yea. It’s more like if this person can’t be studied or has no use here except to haunt the living, sure. Get rid of them. Some of them want that. Some psychos know how bad they are to society.

    But then you have a lot to weigh in on. You said it shouldn’t exist at all. Which for the most part I do agree with. But there are some that I am ok with going away.

    Hitler was not killed in action. He killed himself. People like Dr. Death or the rest of his inner cronies can be executed as well.

    Cosmicomical ,

    Billionaires wear their verdict on their sleeve

    reverendsteveii ,

    Normally I’d say that if you empower the state to execute a certain class of person you can look forward to the state changing that definition so that inconvenient people who did nothing wrong meet it, but I’m unlikely to be mistaken for someone who has committed 10s of billions of dollars in fraud and I can’t help but feel like maybe if just one robber baron is held responsible for the enormous suffering they cause in pursuit of an amount of wealth so vast that it can never be spent and essentially only functions as a high score then the rest will realize that there is the sharp, distinct possibility that they can be held responsible as well.

    umbrella ,
    @umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

    in socialism rich people have way less influence to snake out of consequences. good on them.

    dezmd ,
    @dezmd@lemmy.world avatar

    Political power projection and the manuevering to hide corruption is the ‘rich’ equivalent in highly socialist systems. Smart adaptive people are not necessarily moral or ethical people, so regardless of economic system or government types, you will always have the worry of unscrupulous opportunists.

    umbrella ,
    @umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

    whats important is the end result of better quality of life overall

    i do see many corrupt politicians getting the same treatment on say china though

    btaf45 ,

    “Highly socialist” systems do not have billionaires.

    btaf45 ,

    If Vietnam has billionaires then why the f*ck were they fighting against capitalism in the Vietnam War? North Vietnam might as well have just asked to join South Vietnam and they could have skipped 20 years of wars. Looks like all they were really fighting against was democracy.

    ilikenoodlez ,

    The freedom to run their own country whether that’s into the ground or into prosperity its the right of the vietnamese to self govern. How you correlate colonialism and democracy as the same thing is interesting.

    btaf45 , (edited )

    The freedom to run their own country whether that’s into the ground or into prosperity its the right of the vietnamese to self govern.

    Huh? Both North and South Vietnam gained independence in 1954. The South Vietnamese had an elected government by 1968. North Vietnam had a dictatorship so the people couldn’t run their own country. Then North Vietnam robbed South Vietnam of the ability to run their own country.

    North Vietnam was literally fighting to deny the people to run their own country. To this very day nobody in Vietnam gets to choose their own leaders. The people are not allowed to govern themselves. But South Vietnam got to elect their own leader in 1968.

    How you don’t know that French colonialism ended 10 years before Americans arrived is bizarre.

    Apollo42 ,

    The South Vietnamese governments were all extremely repressive and pretty much openly fascist. The US pretty much didn’t care so long as they were opposed to communism (a recurring theme in US cold war foreign policy)…

    btaf45 , (edited )

    So much of that was wrong. The last government was not “openly fascist” Thanks to the USA, it was democratically elected. North Vietnam was 100x more repressive than South Vietnam in 1975.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam

    Under pressure from the US, they held elections for president and the legislature in 1967. The Senate election took place on 2 September 1967. The Presidential election took place on 3 September 1967

    Apollo42 ,

    The US should really be congratulated for not installing a fully fascist puppet government that one time.

    Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted, which sounds great but it was 84% of those eligible to vote. Huge swathes of the population were not allowed to vote due to their political beliefs or past opposition to the government.

    btaf45 ,

    Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted

    That was actually better than most countries.

    The big picture is that the Vietnamese dictatorship did exactly the wrong thing. Creating a billionaire class proves that they ditched socialism. But they kept the dictatorship. They should have instead entrenched socialism and become a democracy. That would have been a very interesting thing to see. That they did exactly the wrong thing proves that North Vietnam’s entire reason for fighting the war was a farce.

    Apollo42 ,

    Are they really fair elections if the communist parties, the ones with large rural support, are banned from taking part?

    Beaver ,
    @Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

    This is a very rare situation that almost never happens.

    Linkerbaan ,
    @Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

    Anyone worth more than a billion dollars is guilty.

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    Some are more guilty than others, and she’s definitely near the top of the list.

    Still, curious to see what a Socialist country like Vietnam does when its prosecutors catch a person like Truong My Lan red handed. Its such a far cry from what American prosecutors did with offending bank managers after the 2008 Financial Collapse or the UK prosecutors who investigated the Wirecard scandal or the SEC/FCC responded to countless instances in which Elon Musk got caught manipulating stock prices.

    Goes to show you what happens when your country has a tyrannical government and its billionaires don’t enjoy any freedoms.

    wabafee ,
    @wabafee@lemmy.world avatar

    Yes

    echodot ,

    It kind of feels a bit weird being done officially.

    BigMacHole ,

    I Propose we make any Fraud worldwide over a Billion Dollars punishable by Death to!

    John_McMurray , (edited )

    Man, if you think this is actually about fraud and she had dump trucks of cash in her basement…

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