Jailed Vietnamese tycoon's Birkin bags sells for more than $550K

Two luxury handbags confiscated from jailed Vietnamese businesswoman Truong My Lan have sold for than $535,000 (£399,000) in a government auction.Both found new owners in just 30 minutes of bidding - one of the white Hermès Birkin bags alone fetched $440,144, with other selling for $94,858.Hermès's exclusive Birkin bags can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The disgraced tycoon is serving a life sentence for embezzling from a major Vietnamese bank and has been ordered to return $27bn in reparations.Truong My Lan was sentenced to death in April 2024 after a court found that she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country's fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44bn.The sentence was commuted to life in prison last June, after Vietnam abolished the death penalty for a range of crimes.EPAThe disgraced tycoon had said she wanted to leave the bags as 'keepsakes' for her children and grandchildrenDuring her trial, Truong My Lan had tried to hold on to her two Hermès bags, telling the court that she had bought one of them in Italy and the other was a gift from a Malaysian businessman. She said she wanted to leave the bags as "keepsakes" for her children and grandchildren.