That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.
Eg. during India's infamous demonetization, it was rumored that lots of bank-managers had struck inside-deals with politicians/industrialists to turn large hordes of cash into 'white' money. It's likely that they also used the new low-overhead 'jan-dhan' accounts to turn cash into thousands of bank-deposits.
This is not just the 'developing-world' issue; the whole of UK economy is based on such scheming done everyday in the City (and the 'out-of-jurisdiction' isles of the Commonwealth).
Their more important point is that the rule of law doesn't apply to the powerful. For example, a sitting president will never lose their office simply because they broke the law. They can break any law they want, as long as they have the other elites on their side.
they may mutate out of control once they happen and change targets but it takes a LOT of "people in power" looking the other way/tacitly supporting them to happen in the first place.
And of course a lot of violent takeovers are 100% directly done by the elites, such as military coups or outside conquests.
Excellent book on this:
Butler to the World - How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250281937/butlertotheworl...
Buying a house needs a bank account and other things and then someone in the chain eventually asks "where did you get this money?" and unless your answer is "I have owned these sweet shops in central London and empty takeaway restaurants for decades and they unfortunately only deal in cash" then someone will catch you.
Russians buy houses in Cyprus. A lot of high end houses in London are owned by iffy money.
There’s more than a few wealthy former corrupt officials having a nice comfortable life in countries in south america or countries like Malta, cyprus etc…
It’s harder if you don’t have much money (used to be relatively easy with a low amount of money but the oecd has been very efficient at tightening things for people with less than a few millions)
She stole 6.6% of Vietnam's yearly GDP in total.
That's like someone stealing $1.6 trillion USD in the US. Madoff only stole $35 billion for comparison.
Some might say that the death penalty is barbaric. But I read an opinion recently on this that said death seems like a better deal for this person than a lifetime in the worst prison possible.
She actually stole 10.7% ($44b) of Vietnam's yearly GDP in total. The 6.6% figure was the amount that she couldn't return.
So it's like $2.7 trillion USD in the US.
Stealing this proportion of a country's money by one person is simply unprecedented.
If that's the logic, then logically she should be presented with that choice. Otherwise, its a morally thin excuse (not yours but theirs).
A 1 meter x 1 meter x 1 meter container full of water would weigh about 1 metric ton. That’s how I usually think of 1 metric ton.
If I saw a 1 meter x 1 meter x 1 meter neatly densely packed bunch of money bills on top of a euro pallet. I would have no idea if I was looking at the equivalent of some hundreds of thousands of dollars, or billions or what.
For your purposes, assuming $100 USD bills, 1m cubed is roughly 71 million USD.
A 2000 sqft house with 8 foot ceilings, 42 billion.