Summary
Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.
Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.
Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.
All we gotta do is sentence a handful of billionaires to death and watch the behaviour change when they realize they’re not insulated from consequence anymore.
Yeah but what they are going to do is make sure they get those protections back. They aren’t going to get better.
Then sentence more of them as necessary. Im all for sweeping changes but we’re not getting them. Convincing America to kill someone seems way more likely to me.
You didn’t hear it from me, but I heard that billionaire skipped the fare on the subway…
Shit, that’s peanuts. Every single billionaire worldwide wakes up every single day, and actively chooses to murder people. I’m not being hyperbolic.
Imagine all the outrage from red state conservatives if we attempted this.
Or from blue state liberals because “we’re better than them” or some shit.
It’s not like any of us want life to be made so difficult when we’re billionaires either
Good point, good point.
I’m okay with the outrage.
Oh who cares, they get outraged when a day ends in y.
There wouldn’t be any outrage outside of 100s of the wealthy donors. Liberals would completely be more outraged because of norms and civility. The entire point of “drain the swamp” was that most people hate oligarchs, the point of Republicans is to redirect this off into racist and unproductive channels, where nothing ever comes of this hate for corporate and wealthy overlords.
Hold them accountable for all the preventable deaths resulting from them screwing around with the economy. 2008 would have seen a ton of them going to prison for the rest of their life.
2008 turned me from a lib into an anarchist. I’ve completely lost faith in their facade over oligarchy.
In most, if not all, of the world billionaires can just murder whomever they can’t buy.
Clearly not Vietnam
Two things America loves: billionaires and the death sentence. It has just never thought to combine them in this way.
I don’t care for billionaires or the death sentence.
If we revised the system I could be okay with the death sentence in some situations but the way it is now makes absolutely no sense.
I am against the death penalty and would only give it consideration in the case of billionaires
I don’t trust the state to ever decide whether someone deserves to live or die.
Some vigilantes on the other hand…
Meh, I am more lax with life. I think it can easily be done more humane and much cheaper. Shit for a while there I remember reports that the drugs we used weren’t allowed to be used to euthanize pets because they were to inhumane. That said, I think anyone who gets a long sentencing should be allowed the choice. 15 years, or you chose to live 1 year in prison and then if you still agree a year later a mask with carbon monoxide would be fine for me.
We always worry we are killing innocent people, and innocent people will die this way as well, it at least was their choice though. If you do it in a decent way… Instead of it costing far more than life in prison does already right now, it could be beneficial to some people.
Then again I also think assisted suicide should be legal as well. Same sort of idea. Choice to check into a facility or live in normal life, with a set year of discussion with a therapist and at the end of that year if you still wish to be done, your done.
Or even just a sedative to knock you unconscious like at the oral surgeon, then put the mask on the person for 30 mins. They wouldn’t feel a thing and it would be cheap.
I’m 100% for assisted suicide. I don’t think anyone should have the say except the individual. I’d be happy with the plan you laid out, seems reasonable for everyone.
As far as using it as a penalty there are two reasons I’m against it:
- I want it to slowly eat at them that they were afforded a mercy that they didn’t afford others.
- I want to see to it that they live long enough to fully understand the pain and misery they caused
I honestly wish it was possible to exend a convict’s life as long as possible to see that they really do understand and finally feel the shame of their actions.
The purpose of prison ought to be reconciliation and rehabilitation, not revenge or forced contrition. Many prisoners do feel remorse for their crimes, but unfortunately recidivism is so high (in America) because our socioeconomic and judicial systems are tooled to undermine a parolee’s attempts to reintegrate into society, setting them up for failure.
Only in extreme circumstances, i.e. truly sociopathic criminals, should sentences that remove all hope of reintegration or release be issued. True sociopaths are incapable of feeling remorse, no matter how long or under whatever conditions they are kept. They do understand the weight and impact their crimes had on their victims, but they do not care. No amount of coercion will change that. In these fringe cases, I’d argue that giving them the choice between lifelong sequestration or self-inflicted suicide is ostensibly the best solution for everyone.
Sociopathic criminals aren’t to blame for how they are. They aren’t really in a position to change themselves nor have they decided to be this way.
Therefore the only punishment should be taking away their ability to harm others by limiting their freedom.
But if this is the sole punishment, I think hardly any would choose death. Why would they, if they could live a comfortable yet supervised and limited life? Key point is comfortable. That’s not what the vast majority of prisons are today which means allowing them to choose suicide is more or less a coerced death penalty if we’d just slap it onto the current system.
Nailed it
Can we do this in Canada?? I know of a few deserving candidates
USA enters the chat
Because the death penalty is obviously only applied to those most deserving it and not to those with the smallest defence budget and the least public support
I think they meant that the US has a lot of billionaires deserving of the guillotine
That
Work on your reading comprehension.
We’d have to have China execute them…
Russia could make them some tea. ☢️
Any fans of George Carlin here? Remember his bit about the death penalty saying that he would rather have it be done not to poor violent criminals like gangsters and common idiotic murderers, but would rather have it done to the people who really and truly fear death… like major league white collar criminals.
Gang members live violent lives and often don’t have optimistic views for the future, so they know that any day might be their last. A wealthy ass failson of super millionaires who prides himself on fucking over thousands of people every day and is almost pleased to see lawsuits coming in for stolen wages and sexual harassment, however, is confident that they will die free and wealthy and probably have some active organizations named after them.
So the death penalty for them, especially when are forced to spend their time awaiting it in some cold, damp and dirty cell with prison guards who were born in poverty and treat them no differently than some poor drug-addicted shoplifter, is a terrifying concept. Also what needs to happen is that ALL their assets are confiscated. I mean ALL of them. No loopholes for transferring that shit overseas or ‘technically it’s in my wife’s/Son’s name’ bullshit. They get nothing. Their family gets nothing and will be, at best, a middle class family with middle class prospects going forward (no more failsons from that lineage).
This would be the best punishment for any billionaire. They die, get buried in a potter’s field or prison graveyard like common thugs, and their legacies smashed.
I think this case is closely watched by the elites who it may concern. Especially the social reaction. I am waiting for them to spin it like “Communist Dictatorship Vietnam” in conservative media (if it gains mainstream traction).
In all honesty, the enlightenment revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries needed to bring this change about. To hold the wealthy to much higher standards than the poor. If that did happen, we wouldn’t be living in the capitalist hellscape that is today.
There is already a concept from french nobility about that… Didn’t prevent their head to roll in the end
Nice to see some good news for once
returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds)
You can keep the 3 billion and live?
reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
but it has to be in jail?
You can keep the 3 billion and live?
No, as another comment pointed out, that isn’t legal. The assets she has from her embezzled money aren’t liquid; she doesn’t have $12 billion literally sitting in a bank account. These have to be sold off for đồng, and especially if she’s forced to quickly sell them off in exchange for her life (somehow another reason why the death penalty is stupid), she’ll likely retrieve substantially less than she could otherwise by being able to wait for better opportunities to sell.
đồng
Teehee
She still deserves to be in jail. $12 billion is no small amount, and if she can pay back that $9 billion, or even if she can pay back the entire amount, she still had committed a serious crime and deserves to go to jail.
And don’t even think about her keeping that $3 billion. That’s illegal money that she still needs to pay back.
ok, so why not just have that be the condition for the removal of the death penalty?
Perhaps it’s a realization that under the circumstances of a forced sale, she couldn’t possibly repay the total. In which case, with death inevitable, could she leave it to a loved one instead? Probably it could be seized but there’d be a legal tangle which repayment would avoid? Just speculation.
I don’t support the death penalty, but I won’t be terribly sad if a criminal billionaire gets executed by their own government.
I fully support it for the rich and powerful just because prisons can’t reliably hold them. If they’re not put in the ground, they’ll worm their way out of consequences eventually.
Can I ask what’s the cutoff? How much money/how high of a position qualifies you for the electric chair?
Higher than you’ll ever have to worry about.
I’m not worried lol I’m poor. I’d like a number cause if you’re for death penalty, you should’ve thought long and hard through all the details.
Cause you know. It’s about killing people.
0.01-0.1 % net wealth to the nations GDP seems a good cutoff imo. For the US that would be 2.9-29 billion. For Vietnam that would be 47 million - 470 million.
About tree-fiddy
I’d say if you can comfortably afford to live your life without ever once checking a bank balance.
The amount of people in here pushing for the death penalty when it’s used on people they dislike is sickening…
This is a penalty that needs to be abolished, not expanded or made exceptions for.
You’re completely right.
However, I feel like I’d make an exception for people who massively contribute to an actual existential threat to humanity. Ie billionaires. All billionaires.
I’m not saying we should kill them. I’m saying we should use the possibility of that being on the table to make them pay their taxes. The entire planet is ruined by billionaires when we could literally everyone have enough to have our basic needs met while having an economy and industry which isn’t on track to make the planet uninhabitable for us, seeing as it’s the only planet known to support life.
Yes, all life is important. That’s why all life should be protected by making sure the planet doesn’t become one huge airfryer. If while doing that a few billionaires get guillotined, I’m honestly fine with it. I’d prefer they’d just actually help people instead of being selfish assholes, but if them being selfish assholes is putting everyone else in danger, then the choice is clear, no matter your views on the death penalty. (Which as you say, shouldn’t be a thing.)
I dunno, reducing them to being not-billionaires and even not-millionaires would actually be a pretty just sentence IMO. I bet being reduced to a regular Joe would hurt some of them more than the death penalty
What’s to stop them doing it all over again, given some starter money? Usually what makes these assholes so effective is their lack of empathy. That works well in capitalism.
White collar crime needs to start getting hard time in the same prisons that proper criminals go to. That’d be a deterrent, or a motivator to fix the prison systems.
If they can create a law that makes them no longer billionaires, I’m sure they could figure something out to prevent them from doing it again…
The thing with billionaires is that they don’t live in any single legal framework.
Which is why it would be so crucial to actually imprison them to get them to see any sort of consequences, as otherwise they’ll just hop on a private jet and fuck off.
Literally no consequences for stealing the value of labour of hundreds of millions of people. It’s crazy.
We as humanity allow these people to exist. We could just decide we don’t. If we all do, simultaneously, and pinky-promise, then the problem would be dealt with.
But ever tried getting 8 billion people on a zoom call at the same time? Yeah…
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I’m not saying we should kill them. I’m saying we should use the possibility of that being on the table to make them pay their taxes.
I’m guessing most of them do pay their taxes. There are just lots of loopholes that have been lobbied for by the rich that they are using that their expensive tax accountants find for them. Instead of whacking billionaires, maybe get rid of the tax loopholes that let them pay so much less in taxes as compared to their extreme wealth.
And who’s gonna change the laws when there’s no democracy and wealth almost directly translates to political power?
Billionaires can just go around national laws and stuff shit in tax havens. And when they get caught, it gets hushed up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
Moneys fucks people up. Trying to reason money out of the hands of billionaires is harder than convincing a jonesing crack addict to not hit a loaded pipe they’ve got in their hands.
Revolutions aren’t pillow fights.
True, but they’re demands of a better world. There’s a difference between killing in a revolution and a 60 year old communist government executing an embezzler instead of giving her life in prison
The state ending someone’s life for breaking its laws and then having people here who would normally condemn the use of capital punishment compare it to a revolution and call it justified just because the state in question claims to be socialist is just so uniquely Lemmy.
is just so uniquely Lemmy.
Lol read a fucking book, if the left has been consistent about one thing throughout history, is constant infighting and bickering.
Nothing you’ve said is unique to Lemmy. Except maybe the part about making uninformed comments with extreme confidence.
That’s consistent across all social media!
This is not a revolution. It’s the state killing a person. The death penalty is ALWAYS unacceptable, without expections. Do I want billionares to die? Hell yes! Do I think the state should have the power to kill people? Hell no!
So you are a more hands on type. You are fine with the killing if it’s you as a a worker class pulling the trigger.
They didn’t say that. I think it’s pretty clear what they mean. The state has a monopoly on violence. They are permitted a certain amount of force in order to keep the peace. When a government misuses that power, or oversteps to the point of deciding who gets to live or die, then it’s gone too far.
If you can’t understand the difference between a regular worker being possibly oppressed by this misuse of force, and the state apparatus itself, then I really don’t know what to tell you.
I understand that the state has a monopoly on violence. Violence IS the ultimate power to rule no matter the form of government. What you don’t understand is you can’t limit that power. Once granted, even on what might appear to be a limited basis, and it’s never limited for long, cannot be revoked. You can totally remove the power of the government to use violence and then hand that power to the populace-- but this is not a good idea. The only thing dumber than the government is the public.
The person I responded to stated plainly, they were for killing billionaires. They just didn’t want the government to do it. So he must be willing to pull the trigger himself. Which is a valid political stance. Even though I think it’s very misguided.
You have read into a plain statement something YOU believe. And if you don’t understand that, then I don’t know what to tell you either.
you can’t limit that power. Once granted, even on what might appear to be a limited basis, and it’s never limited for long, cannot be revoked.
Simply untrue.
Show me examples. And show that such examples haven’t degraded over time.
Why, though? The usual reasoning for abolishing the death penalty is the argument that we might make a mistake and mistakenly sentence innocent people to death. But what about crimes like this, where the crime is entirely on paper, fully documented, and with no risk that you’re prosecuting the wrong person?
Edit: I’m not sure why I’m getting downvoted with no replies. I’m asking an actual question here, if you disagree why not state your opinion?
I think it’s a valid question. I wouldn’t say that the only reason for abolishing the death penalty is because we might make a mistake… that definitely factors into it, but there’s more to it.
Ask yourself what purpose does it serve to put someone to death? They’re already in jail/prison and no longer a threat to society. Deterrence? Is the death penalty any more of a deterrence than a life sentence?
The only purpose I can think of for the death penalty is that it’s for “Revenge”. It doesn’t actually fix anything in of itself. It doesn’t resolve disputes, it doesn’t really solve anything.
Because we’ve always said that we won’t make any excuses for the terror when our turn comes.
Can you expand on this?
Either you replied to the wrong comment, or you’re clearly thinking of some context that I’m not, or it’s related to some saying that I’m not familiar with.It’s a quote from the article Marx wrote after his Rheinische Zeitung got closed by Prussian censorship
Well fuck billionaires but papers can and trials can be wrong.
Like who’s to say she wasn’t a patsy?
I’m not saying she was, but how would you prove beyond any doubt that she wasn’t?
Probably this case is an open-and-shut case but my point is valid, I think.
I want to point out that this is already the standard for conviction. The finder of fact must find the accused to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt before convicting them. So from a legal perspective, everyone convicted of a crime already has been proven guilty to the highest possible standard. If there is any shred of doubt at all about the guilt of the accused, they’re supposed to be acquitted. It’s only possible in retrospect when new evidence emerges that exonerates the accused that it can be determined that the original guilty verdict was incorrect. You can’t really “force” this evidence to emerge with any amount of policy changes. It just happens over time.
For example, witnesses lie. Maybe five years after the fact they feel bad about lying and retract their testimony. Maybe some of the investigators assigned to the case just made up some evidence to get the accused convicted in court because they just thought there was no way he could be innocent and they just needed to cook up the evidence to get them declared guilty, and they can only admit that when the statute of limitation passes. Or maybe, three years later, a convenience store manager deleting old footage happens upon a CCTV tape giving the accused an alibi. Or maybe still, the accused was actually framed and their framers only got caught ten years later doing some other crime, and it turned out that they forged the accused’s signatures on those documents and used their computer to send those e-mails without their knowledge. I could go on.
So if your proposed standard is applied, it would not actually exclude anyone from execution because everyone who’s been convicted has already been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
So if your proposed standard is applied, it would not actually exclude anyone from execution because everyone who’s been convicted has already been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
Someone better tell Texas
Full support dude.
But what about crimes like this, where the crime is entirely on paper, fully documented, and with no risk that you’re prosecuting the wrong person?
This point rests my case.
Nonsense. I oppose the death penalty for almost all crimes. It’s just too easy to render an inaccurate verdict, and you can’t undo an execution.
But we don’t have any doubt about billionaires. They’re verifiably guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt.
I also think they should be able to avoid the death penalty by giving up their wealth and living on minimum wage for a number of years equal to the number of billions they captured and withheld from society.
Seems to be a common mindset among americans. As european I don’t understand it.
Yea, I’m against the death penalty too. This shit shouldn’t be legal. It should be illegal and brutal. Like the mob takes you to the square and threatens to lynch you unless you give away the billionaire persona. The cops turn a blind eye. Total societal shame. Collapse of moral and legal order. And then afterwards, we all feel bad about it and we legislate a ban on wealth hoarding so that our society never falls to those kinds of depths ever again.
The fact that this comment likely isn’t satire, should be concerning.
People: please read books. That’s all I’m going to say. Read about your ideology and its bloody, storied history, before posting ignorant shit like this.
Check your knowledge of history. Revolutionary history is actually not uniquely bloody. Counter-revolutionary and/or status-quo violence has historically been just as, or even more, bloody (need I mention the countless massacres and genocides perpetrated by colonialists and imperialists? Or is it enough to mention France, Russia, China, and Cambodia to win every argument?)
That said, I am of course very very very averse to any kind of violence. The whole point of my comment is that it is a dirty, shameful thing that should never happen. The fact that it does happen is extremely unfortunate but ultimately is the fault of the status-quo boots pushing down people’s throats. There is always a non-bloody way out of an oppressive situation: stop the fucking oppressing. Lift the boot. Give up the privilege. Simple as.
Example: 1960s Quebec. The Catholic Church simply gives up its stranglehold on French-Canadian society. No anticlerical massacres follow. Everyone happy. That’s the model.
I used to be against the death penalty. Problem is that obscenely rich and well connected people can just hire assassins to execute people they don’t like with impunity. Case in point the Boeing engineer that supposedly committed suicide briefly before his hearing on Boeings deliberate security violations leading to hundreds of people slaughtered in preventable plane accidents.
Executing the rich and powerful is necessary to level the playing field.
Pearl clutching liberals? Not once.
It’s a classic.
I’m against the death penalty, but…
There are no buts; if there’s a “but” then you’re pro capital punishment.
It’s a classic false dichotomy.
I’m against killing people, but if someone tries to kill me…
You’re right, it is a false dichotomy on your part. There’s a difference between an active threat and someone who has been arrested. We are talking about sentencing someone who is on trial, not about active self-defence. Or would you shoot someone as they are running away from you, just because they attacked you earlier?
Do you think the people who are pro death penalty want to kill people for every minor crime? Because they also just want to condemn to death the people who they believe to be morally righteous to do that to.
Fuck accountability right?
That’s not what I’m saying or implying in any way.
I’m against the death penalty. I have many objections to it. though if the person at hand is a billionaire all but one of my objections disappear.
the one remaining is that I’d rather not have the government have the power to kill its citizens. so I’m willing to accept life sentences and forfeiture of all assets instead. mind that the crime I’m talking about here is being a billionaire.
Bring this shit to the US. Chop chop.
They defrauded 12 billion, only have to pay 9? Sounds like they just made 3 billion.
Return 3/4 of what was stolen to get execution downgraded to life imprisonment that’s not getting away with it.
That said, my general opposition to the death penalty does influence me here.
If these fucks face a realistic prospect of getting their heads chopped off? Sure, let 'em roll those dice.
These god-damn violent tankies. Vietnam should have just fined her a much smaller amount than the corrupt practices made them, like how the West handles corrupt oligarchs.
Seriously. If she was born in the West, she’d be on the cover of Forbes and taking photos next to celebs.
No… A closer comparison shows that she would be like Sam Bankman-Fried with a 25 year sentence and ordered to repay $11 billion. Although she probably would end up on a cover of Forbes.
Bankman Fried didnt steal just from the people. He stole from other billionaires.
“You didn’t just steal from people, you had to go and steal from people who had a lot of money and THAT crosses a LINE!”
–American justice system
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Nice false dichotomy.
It’s sarcasm
I’m fundamentally against capital punishment. This could be an acceptable exception though.
Eat the rich!
So not fundamentally, then.
It’s okay, billionaires aren’t real people.
This is the right way to deal with these ghouls.
We now have precedent y’all
She’s a real estate profiteering billionaire who conned regular people out of their savings. I say let her pay 100% back and then fetch the guillotine.
So make it a one time only thing then? Next billionaire you have in the dock will know you can’t be trusted to keep your word (“return the money and your life will be spared“) and so will have zero reason to cooperate.
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I like this direction. Let’s do the rest of the billionaires.
That just sounds like every landlord I’ve lived under. I agree.
Nah, gotta go higher than what they stole. 300% should be minimum.
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