US Student Otto Warmbier Dies Days After Release From North Korea

Agencies

June 20, 2017

Washington, Jun 20: Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea for nearly a year and a half, died Monday afternoon, his parents announced.

Warmbier had been medically evacuated and returned to Cincinnati last week in a coma.

"Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today," his parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said in a written statement.

Warmbier's death was mourned by his wide circle of friends and by complete strangers, and it intensified political reaction to his detention, with outraged critics calling it 'murder.'

President Donald Trump issued a statement Monday afternoon. "Melania and I offer our deepest condolences to the family of Otto Warmbier on his untimely passing. There is nothing more tragic for a parent than to lose a child in the prime of life. Our thoughts and prayers are with Otto's family and friends, and all who loved him.

"Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency. The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday night, "Otto Warmbier, an American citizen, was murdered by the Kim Jong-un regime. In the final year of his life, he lived the nightmare in which the North Korean people have been trapped for 70 years: forced labor, mass starvation, systematic cruelty, torture, and murder.

"North Korea is threatening its neighbors, destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region, and rapidly developing the technology to strike the American homeland with nuclear weapons. Now it has escalated to brutalizing Americans, including three other citizens currently imprisoned in North Korea. The United States of America cannot and should not tolerate the murder of its citizens by hostile powers."

Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Monday evening that "Otto is dead because of Kim Jong-un's repressive, murderous regime," and that North Korea "must be held accountable for their continued barbaric behavior."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also said North Korea must be held accountable for the "murder."

Warmbier's death could push Congress or the Trump administration to restrict or ban Americans from traveling to North Korea.

Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Joe Wilson, R-S.C., have introduced the North Korea Travel Control Act in the House, which would require Americans who want to travel to North Korea to obtain a license. There would be no licenses for tourists.

The Senate has been more reluctant to introduce restrictions on Americans - but Warmbier's death might be the trigger that they need, analysts say.

Separately, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has raised the prospect of the administration using an executive order to ban travel to North Korea.

"We have been evaluating whether we should put some type of travel visa restriction to North Korea," Tillerson told a House committee last week. "We haven't come to a final conclusion, but we are considering it."

On Monday he issued a statement. "Today we received with deep sadness the news that Otto Warmbier has passed away.

"On behalf of the entire State Department and the United States government, I extend my condolences to the Warmbier family, and offer my prayers as they enter a time of grief no parent should ever know.

"We hold North Korea accountable for Otto Warmbier's unjust imprisonment, and demand the release of three other Americans who have been illegally detained."

Warmbier had gone to North Korea as a tourist on his way to Hong Kong for a study abroad program, but was stopped when he tried to leave the country. After a sham trial, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

Fred Warmbier said North Korea lures American tourists to the country with tour groups such as the one his son joined, Young Pioneer Tours, and then "they take them hostage."

Young Pioneer Tours said after Warmbier's death that it would no longer take American citizens to North Korea.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier had no news about their son during his detention after March of last year. He was not allowed consular visits, and it was not until this month that U.S. officials and the family were told that he had been in a coma for more than a year.

He was medically evacuated, landed in Cincinnati on Tuesday night and was rushed to the hospital.

On Thursday, doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center said that the 22-year-old Otto Warmbier had extensive loss of brain tissue, and was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness.

That morning, Fred Warmbier denounced what he called the "pariah" regime that brutalized his son.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier issued a statement Monday afternoon:

"It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home. Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20pm.

"It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost - future time that won't be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds. But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person. You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched - Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two - that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family.

"We would like to thank the wonderful professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who did everything they could for Otto. Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.

"When Otto returned to Cincinnati late on June 13th he was unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands. He looked very uncomfortable - almost anguished. Although we would never hear his voice again, within a day the countenance of h"is face changed - he was at peace. He was home and we believe he could sense that.

We thank everyone around the world who has kept him and our family in their thoughts and prayers. We are at peace and at home too.

"Fred & Cindy Warmbier and Family'

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who worked to try to free Warmbier, said in a statement Monday afternoon: "Otto Warmbier was such a promising young man. He was kind, generous and accomplished. He had all the talent you could ever ask for and a bright future ahead of him. His passing today is a loss for Ohio and for all of us. Jane and I are lifting up the Warmbier family in our prayers at this difficult time, and we are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of this remarkable young Ohioan."

Gov. John Kasich, R, said in a written statement: "All Ohioans mourn the death of Otto Warmbier, a young man of exceptional spirit. Our prayers go out to his family, who have shown great strength and courage throughout this terrible ordeal. This horrendous situation further underscores the evil, oppressive nature of the North Korean regime that has such disregard for human life."

Teresa Sullivan, president of U-Va., said by phone Monday afternoon: "It's just such a waste of a promising young life. That's very hard - that's very hard to accept.

"I feel so sorry for his classmates and his fraternity brothers. He had many friends at the university, professors who taught him, I think everyone feels, very deeply, this loss.

"I think we always somewhere, deep down, thought he would come back to us and finish his degree with us."

Warmbier was much loved. He was homecoming king and captain of his high-school soccer team, an expert in underground rap music and economics, a thrift-store shopper who wore his selections, like a purplish-striped sweater under a houndstooth blazer, with a big, confident grin.

He was a top student at U-Va., with a scholarship designed for the most "intellectually curious" students, and that inquisitiveness led him to befriend strangers, have long talks with friends about big ideas, and travel abroad to places such as Ecuador and Cuba. He took care of friends and family, offering advice to his younger brother and sister, reminding his mother they should visit a relative who was sick, surprising friends with throwback jerseys, paintings, Hawaiian shirts and other thrift-store finds.

He was unusually disciplined, certain of his major and with his path to a career in finance mapped out early on; as a junior he had already long had enough credits to graduate, a summer at the London School of Economics completed, and summer internship likely to lead to a job offer after graduation.

Last month, his classmates graduated from U-Va. without him.

Todd Siler, a teacher at Wyoming High School, said Mondaythat he saw two of Warmbier's friends from the graduating class of 2013, of which he was salutatorian, earlier Monday. They had been to the hospital to see him, and came to school to see their friend's name on the graduation walk; all the students have their name etched on a brick there. "Tough, tough moments today," he said.

The Wyoming City Schools said in a statement Monday that they were deeply saddened by the loss of Otto Warmbier. "The countless contributions he made to his school and community through his leadership, actions, and limitless enthusiasm will be felt far into the future."

Siler said, "Otto just brought out the best in people."

"In a short time he had an impact on so many people of all different walks of life. ... I think that's what makes his passing so hard - there aren't enough people like that in this world. We lost a good one. We lost a great one.

"Otto was strong, such a strong kid," Siler added. "His spirit touched everybody, and I want to believe that, despite the treatment that he experienced, that he was hanging on to come home. And he did that. He knew he was there and with family. ... I think there was a part of him still left that understood that.

"He's home. So it's OK to let go."

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Vietnamese billionaire Truong My Lan sentenced to DEATH for $44bn fraud

News Network

April 11,2024

Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh city in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Thanh Nien said.

It's a rare verdict - she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime, i.e. looting one of the country's largest banks over a period of 11 years.

The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media. They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved.

The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five defendants were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges.

"There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era," says David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

The trial was the most dramatic chapter so far in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

A conservative ideologue steeped in Marxist theory, Nguyen Phu Trong believes that popular anger over untamed corruption poses an existential threat to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He began the campaign in earnest in 2016 after out-manoeuvring the then pro-business prime minister to retain the top job in the party.

The campaign has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country's richest women has joined their ranks.

Truong My Lan comes from a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. It has long been the commercial engine of the Vietnamese economy, dating well back to its days as the anti-communist capital of South Vietnam, with a large, ethnic Chinese community.

She started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother, but began buying land and property after the Communist Party ushered in a period of economic reform, known as Doi Moi, in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

Although Vietnam is best known outside the country for its fast-growing manufacturing sector, as an alternative supply chain to China, most wealthy Vietnamese made their money developing and speculating in property.

All land is officially state-owned. Getting access to it often relies on personal relationships with state officials. Corruption escalated as the economy grew, and became endemic.

By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.

Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.

They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank's lending.

According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.

That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.

She was also accused of bribing generously to ensure her loans were never scrutinised. One of those who was tried used to be a chief inspector at the central bank, who was accused of accepting a $5m bribe.

The mass of officially sanctioned publicity about the case channelled public anger over corruption against Truong My Lan, whose fatigued, unmade-up appearance in court was in stark contrast to the glamorous publicity photos people had seen of her in the past.

But questions are also being asked about why she was able to keep on with the alleged fraud for so long.

"I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

"Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations.

"It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice. SCB is not the only bank that is used like this. So perhaps the government lost sight because there are so many similar cases in the market."

David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.

"What Nguyen Phu Trong and his allies in the party are trying to do is to regain control of Saigon, or at least stop it from slipping away.

"Up until 2016 the party in Hanoi pretty much let this Sino-Vietnamese mafia run the place. They would make all the right noises that local communist leaders are supposed to make, but at the same time they were milking the city for a substantial cut of the money that was being made down there."

At 79 years old, party chief Nguyen Phu Trong is in shaky health, and will almost certainly have to retire at the next Communist Party Congress in 2026, when new leaders will be chosen.

He has been one of the longest-serving and most consequential secretary-generals, restoring the authority of the party's conservative wing to a level not seen since the reforms of the 1980s. He clearly does not want to risk permitting enough openness to undermine the party's hold on political power.

But he is trapped in a contradiction. Under his leadership the party has set an ambitious goal of reaching rich country status by 2045, with a technology and knowledge-based economy. This is what is driving the ever-closer partnership with the United States.

Yet faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption. Fight corruption too much, and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity. Already there are complaints that bureaucracy has slowed down, as officials shy away from decisions which might implicate them in a corruption case.

"That's the paradox," says Le Hong Hiep. "Their growth model has been reliant on corrupt practices for so long. Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more."

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