Two luxurious purses seized from jailed Vietnamese businessman Truong My Lan have offered for greater than $535,000 (£399,000) at a authorities public sale.
Each discovered new house owners after simply half-hour of bidding. One of many white Hermes Birkin luggage offered alone for $440,144, and the opposite offered for $94,858.
A luxurious Birkin bag from Hermès might be price tons of of hundreds of {dollars}.
The disgraced tycoon is serving a life sentence for embezzling from a significant Vietnamese financial institution and has been ordered to pay again $27 billion in restitution.
Truong My Lan was sentenced to loss of life in April 2024 after a court docket discovered that he secretly managed the Saigon Industrial Financial institution, the nation’s fifth-largest lender, and took out loans and money totaling $44 billion over greater than a decade via a community of shell firms.
The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in June final yr after Vietnam abolished the loss of life penalty for varied crimes.
Throughout her trial, Truong My Lan tried to seize two Hermès luggage, telling the court docket that one was purchased in Italy and the opposite was a present from a Malaysian businessman. She mentioned she needed to depart the bag as a “souvenir” to her kids and grandchildren.
In January, Ho Chi Minh Metropolis’s Civil Judgment Enforcement Division introduced that it was looking for an skilled to evaluate the worth of two crocodile pores and skin Hermes Birkin luggage seized from Truong Milan.
In line with native media, the luggage have been amongst 1,200 confiscated property to be offered on the Ho Chi Minh Metropolis Asset Public sale Service Middle on Monday.
The bag that was offered at a lower cost was a measurement 30. A costlier bag (measurement 25, embellished with rhinestones on the clasp and trim) offered for almost seven occasions its beginning worth.
Nicholas Parnell, founding father of luxurious trend wholesaler Company Parnell, mentioned the worth of Birkin luggage had been rising yr on yr for “a very long time”.
“This is without doubt one of the hottest luggage, and that is been achieved primarily by Hermès limiting folks’s entry,” he mentioned.
Mr Parnell mentioned the purse itself was a “murals” and “very uncommon” and many individuals thought-about it an funding.
“It turns into one thing that you simply cherish and maintain on to,” he mentioned.
“We have now lots of particular editions, so the worth is form of limitless.”
Public sale home Sotheby’s is promoting the luggage for tens of hundreds of {dollars} every.
Sotheby’s Paris offered the unique Birkin bag for €8.6 million (£7.4 million, $10.1 million) in July 2025, making it the best worth ever offered at public sale for a purse on the time.
