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Vietnam Shows How They Clean Up Corrupt Banking System as Banker Sentenced to DEATH for Fraud

Vietnam — (ZH) The lack of prosecution of US bankers responsible for the great financial crisis has been a much debated topic over the years, leading to the coinage of such terms as “Too Big To Prosecute”, the termination of at least one corrupt DOJ official, the revelation that Eric Holder is the most useless Attorney General in history, and of course billions in cash kickbacks between Wall Street and D.C. And, naturally, the lack of incentives that punish cheating and fraud, is one of the main reasons why such fraud will not only continue but get bigger until once again, the entire system crashes under the weight of accumulated theft, corruption and Fed-driven malinvestment. But what can be done? In this case, Vietnam may have just shown the way – sentence embezzling bankers to death. Because if one wants to promptly stop an end to all financial crime, few things motivate as efficiently as a firing squad.

According to the BBC, the former head of a major Vietnamese bank has been sentenced to death for his role in a fraud case involving some 800 billion dong (which sounds like a lot of dong, but equals roughly $35 million) of illegal loans. Nguyen Xuan Son, who served as general director of OceanBank, was convicted of embezzlement, abuse of power and economic mismanagement. Bank founder, tycoon Ha Van Tham, and dozens of other banking officials are also on trial, accused of lending violations.

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Nguyen Xuan Son was sentenced to death at the People’s Court in Hanoi

Meanwhile, dozens of former employees also received lengthy prison sentences in the major corruption trial. Because OceanBank is partially-state owned, Son’s crime of mishandling state money was thought to be particularly serious. After leaving the bank, he rose to be head of state oil giant PetroVietnam. As Reuters reported previously, PetroVietnam and Vietnam’s banking sector are at the heart of a sweeping corruption crackdown in the communist state.

The four officials are accused of intentional breaches of state rules over a loss-making investment in Ocean Group’s banking unit, police said in an online statement.

Investigations into PetroVietnam made global headlines last month when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former official of a PetroVietnam unit, from a park in Berlin and forcing him home to face charges of financial mismanagement.

A Politburo member who was a former PetroVietnam chairman and a vice trade minister have also been sacked from their positions as part of the crackdown — unusual moves in a country where such senior officials are rarely dismissed.

To be sure, Vietnam is one of the world’s biggest executioners, according to Amnesty International, but this is said to be the first time in years that the death penalty has been given to such a high-flying former official. Back in 2013, another former banker, Vu Quoc Hao, the former general director of Agribank Financial Leasing Co, was also sentenced to death by lethal injection for embezzling $25 million (or what Goldman would call “weekend lunch money”) a case which however was relatively low profile and received little international attention.

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Earlier in the day, OceanBank’s ex-chairman Ha Van Tham, once one of the richest people in Vietnam, was jailed for life on the same charges, and for violating lending rules. Judge Truong Viet Toan said: “Tham and Son’s behaviour is very serious, infringing on the management of state assets and causing public grievances, which requires strict punishment.”

The bank’s ex-chairman Ha Van Tham was jailed for life

More details from BBC:

In total, 51 officials and bankers stood trial, accused of mismanagement leading to losses of $69m (£50m).

The case comes amid a massive anti-corruption crackdown in Vietnam, which is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in Asia. It is ranked 113th out of 176 countries on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.

The government has vowed to tackle the issue in order to boost the country’s economic growth. In May, a top Vietnamese official was sacked for “serious violations” while running PetroVietnam.

And yet,  while one could be left with the impression that this is a case of justice finally being done, even today’s sentences appears to have an element of corruption to them: according to BBC, the blitz, while tackling corruption, has mainly targeted opponents of Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.

Still, no matter the circumstances, an outcome such as this in the US remains impossible: after all it is America’s very own embezzling bankers that control the legislative and judicial branches, and most recently, the executive not to mention the central bank, which is why deterrence of any substantial scale will never take place in the US and small, medium and large-scale theft will continue unabated, with the occasional slaps on the wrist, until there is nothing left to steal.

There Has To Be a Cheaper Way To Find The Worst People — 2016 Elections Will Cost Over $6 Billion

This presidential election cycle has been nothing, if not a controversy-laden shit show of the bizarre — and a monumentally pricey one, at that. It’s now estimated the stupefying cost for the duopoly to provide us with two altogether unappealing candidates — possibly the least liked in American electoral history — as well as congressional minions, totals no less than $6.6 billion.

And that’s a conservative figure.

Despite nearly a century of anti-marijuana propaganda inundating schools, ads, and politics, in fact, legalizing cannabis has greater approval from the public than either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Yet, the two candidates, their respective political parties, outside groups, and individual donors will, all told, spend around 86.5 million inflation-adjusted dollars more than on the 2012 presidential election.

There simply must be a cheaper way to find two people no one wants to vote for.

Hell, Giant Meteor — the satirical no-party candidate whose slogan, “Just end it already,” speaks volumes to weariness — has amassed a sizeable following in recent months, as the public apparently abandons all pretense of hope.

To wit, 70 percent of voters likely to support Hillary Clinton, and a stunning 41 percent of all likely voters, would re-elect President Barack Obama if a third term were legal, Rasmussen reports.

So, if the public harbors only negligible fondness for Clinton and Trump, who deems them worthy of such colossal sums?

Unsurprisingly in both cases, it’s the elite — the billionaires and millionaires directly, indirectly, and sometimes shadily channeling their fortunes in hopes their chosen nominee will conform policy favorable to their interests from the helm of the White House.

OpenSecrets.org reports:

“Candidates and news outlets have decried the outsized influence of a small number of donors throughout the election season. Here’s a startling statistic: The top 100 families have given about 11.9 percent to the total $5.5 billion raised at this point, compared to 5.6 percent in all of 2012. Their names are familiar — Thomas and Kathryn Steyer have given $57.2 million to liberal causes, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson have doled out $47.3 million to GOP-allied forces, and Donald Sussman has so far provided $34.4 million to groups helping Democrats. Expect to see this list shift a bit: Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz pledged an additional $35 million to defeat Donald Trump earlier this month.”

Perhaps surprisingly to some, billionaire globalist and avid political influencer, George Soros, ranked only 9th in the list of top donors, contributing ‘just’ $17,689,038.

And this election cycle hasn’t been devoid of grassroots political donors, either, although their chosen ‘voice of the people’ candidate, Bernie Sanders, has since dropped out and endorsed Hillary Clinton — leaving a legacy of heartbroken, if not embittered, young voters scrambling for options — and an older, wiser generation hardly able to contain its I told you so’s.

OpenSecrets continues:

“The Obama re-election campaign floored campaign finance experts with his knack for tapping into the small donor pool — an impressive 32 percent of the campaign’s total funds came from people giving $200 or less in 2012. But Bernie Sanders topped that. More than half of his contributions, or 59 percent, came from small donors, totaling $134.6 million, which is about one and half times as much as Clinton and more than twice as much as Trump.”

Clearly, the so-called ‘little guy’ has nary the clout enjoyed by the privileged, moneyed class — and though that might be widely understood — the reminder dark horse candidates rarely make it to the big race seems more pronounced than ever in recent years.

As an Independent, Sanders’ decision to run on the Democratic ticket against the all-powerful Clinton, as a Democratic Socialist, no less, seemed fated to fail from the start — after all, groundbreaking though his bid was, a populist David vowing to disassemble the corporate, banking Goliath could never reap the billionaire financing to endure.

“In a campaign that has broken new ground in lots of ways, there’s at least one thing we can depend on, and that’s record-breaking spending on U.S. elections,” explained Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “While this campaign saw the rise of the small donor and a fall in spending reported by groups that hide their donors, overall, important trends hold true: More money is still coming from a tiny set of elite donors. It’s going to super PACs that are scarcely independent of the campaigns they support. And it’s targeting competitive races where the vote will be closest and the opportunity to have an impact, greatest.”

In effect, the elite doles out its fortunes on elite candidates who will best serve the elite’s interests — but, nah, take it from Hillary: the Russians might rig the election.

Money is proportionate to influence, it could justifiably be argued, and in an election cycle costing upwards of $7 billion, the overwhelming majority of us pull literally zero weight.

Finagling the popular vote constitutes little more than a distraction for the political heavyweights, whose insider connections and corporate and industry backers effectively usurped what little import the average American voter maintained when the Supreme Court ruled in their favor with the notorious corporations are people Citizens United decision in 2010.

Whatever vociferous contention Clinton and Trump might garner from an unusually alert populace this election season, don’t be fooled — the elite ultimately pull the strings — the vote is merely an illusory construct of a severely limited choice between two candidates of their choosing. Not ours.

All told, just remember the words of Mark Twain:

“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”