A court in southern Vietnam has sentenced a Chinese woman to death for circulating large amounts of counterfeit Vietnamese currency, the presiding judge said Wednesday.
Chinese citizen Guo Jin Hua, 65, conspired with 31-year-old Mai Van Truc and 35 other Vietnamese to smuggle nearly 5 billion dong (300,000 dollars) in fake bills from China into Vietnam, according to Truong Van Sa, chairman of the People's Court of Tien Giang Province.
After a 10-day trial which ended Tuesday, Hua was sentenced to death. Truc was sentenced to life in prison, and the other 35 accomplices were given jail terms ranging from 2 to 23 years.
"When we announced the death sentence to her, she was sad but remained very calm," said Sa. "It proved she was the real leader of the ring."
Sa said Hua had cemented the allegiance of accomplices by providing them with protection from other Chinese gangsters while they operated in China. He said police suspected there were other Chinese criminals backing Hua, but had been unable to convince her to provide information on them.
The ring was exposed in June 2007 when Tien Giang police arrested Le Minh Son, 30, and Nguyen Van Dung, 40, as they were on the way to spend counterfeit money.
Based on their testimony, police arrested Hua in the northern province of Nam Dinh.
Prosecutors said Hua confessed that she and her accomplices had been circulating counterfeit money since September, 2005. Hua said she hid the bills in objects such as milk cans, VCD players and electric cookers to bring them into the country undetected.
The counterfeit money was printed in Taiwan, conveyed through China, and brought into Vietnam over back trails or through border gates.
Hua is the 78th person sentenced to death in Vietnam so far this year.
According to Vietnamese law, those who make, store, transport or circulate counterfeit money, treasury bills or bonds can be sentenced to between three and seven years of imprisonment.
In particularly serious cases, punishment can range up to life imprisonment or capital punishment.
