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.
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’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.
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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…