HANOI, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- A 52-year-old woman named Chau Thi Thu Nga, former deputy of Vietnam's National Assembly, the country's top legislature, was brought to court here on Monday for the charge of swindling to appropriate assets.
Before being dismissed from the National Assembly in 2015, Nga was a representative for Hanoi capital city and chairwoman of a local real estate firm named Housing Group.
Housing Group had not been licensed by Hanoi authorities to implement a housing project in the city, but Nga ordered staff to make up things so that a big apartment building seemed to be under construction.
Nga and her accomplices signed 752 capital-contributing contracts with apartment buyers and dealers, and then appropriated over 348 billion Vietnamese dong (15.4 million U.S. dollars), according to local investigators.
Using up all the money, failing to refund the investors, and having no apartments to hand over, Nga and nine of her accomplices have been accused of having swindled to appropriate assets.
The trial is scheduled to last for 18 days.
