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Last Updated: Tuesday, 8 August 2006, 22:22 GMT 23:22 UK

Death penalty looms for Vietnam trader
By Bill Hayton
Vietnam Reporter, BBC News, Hanoi


There cannot be many places in the world where you can get shot for losing money on a foreign exchange deal, but Vietnam is one of them.


Foreign firms operating in Vietnam worry, say US officials

That is the situation potentially facing Nguyen Thi Quynh Van.

Until March this year, she was the deputy head of trade financing at a branch of one of Vietnam's biggest state-owned banks in the port city of Hai Phong.

Now she is under arrest, having been charged with "losing state resources through economic mismanagement" - a crime that carries the death penalty in Vietnam.

She is alleged to have lost $5.4m (£2.36m) in a series of speculative currency deals with at least three foreign banks based in Vietnam - in particular the Dutch bank ABN Amro, one of the 20 biggest banks in the world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5257270.stm