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Vietnamese businesswoman Truong My Lan has landed in hot water due to embezzlement charges for which she is set to serve a life sentence.
To balance the fraud losses, the authorities are trying to sell the disgraced tycoon's Birkin bags and a luxury yacht, as she has been ordered to return $27 billion in reparations.
Ho Chi Minh City's Civil Judgement Enforcement Agency said this week that it was seeking experts to estimate the value of two crocodile skin Hermès Birkin bags seized from Truong My Lan.
Meanwhile, her yacht is set to go on auction next month with a starting price of 49.3 billion Vietnamese dong ($1.9 million).
Truong My Lan was sentenced to death in April 2024 after a court found that she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country's fifth-biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44 billion.
She denied the charges and tried unsuccessfully to appeal her death sentence, though that was reduced to life in prison last June, after Vietnam abolished the death penalty for a range of crimes.
More than 80 people, including her husband and niece, were tried with her and were all convicted.
During her trial, Truong My Lan had tried to hold on to her two Hermès bags, telling the court that she had bought one of them in Italy and the other was a gift from a Malaysian businessman.
She said she wanted to leave the bags as "keepsakes" for her children and grandchildren.
But her appeal was rejected by the court, which ruled that the bags were ill-gotten.
