Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

Two luxury handbags confiscated from imprisoned Vietnamese businesswoman Truong My Lan have sold for more than $535,000 (£399,000) at a government auction, AzerNEWS reports, citing BBC.

Both items found new owners within just 30 minutes of bidding. One white Hermès Birkin bag alone sold for $440,144, while the second was purchased for $94,858. Hermès Birkin bags are among the most exclusive luxury accessories in the world and can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on rarity and condition.

Truong My Lan, a disgraced real estate tycoon, is currently serving a life sentence after being convicted of embezzlement involving one of Vietnam’s largest banks. She has also been ordered to repay $27 billion in damages.

In April 2024, she was initially sentenced to death after a court found that she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank — the country’s fifth-largest lender — and had illegally obtained loans and withdrawn funds over more than a decade through a network of shell companies, totaling approximately $44 billion. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in June 2024 after Vietnam abolished the death penalty for several economic crimes.

During her trial, Truong My Lan attempted to retain the two Hermès bags, stating that she had purchased one in Italy and received the other as a gift from a Malaysian businessman. She said she hoped to keep them as “family keepsakes” for her children and grandchildren.

Interestingly, the case has drawn global attention not only because of the scale of the fraud, but also because it highlights how luxury goods seized in financial crime cases are increasingly being auctioned off to recover state losses. Experts note that high-end fashion items like Birkin bags can sometimes retain or even increase in value over time, making them unusual but highly effective “alternative assets” in legal recovery processes.