NG YU Zhi, the alleged nickel-trading fraudster at the centre of a US$1.1 billion scam, has had another two charges, one each for forgery and money laundering, laid to his name. He is suspected of having committed these offences when he tried selling a property said to have been bought with criminal proceeds.
In district court proceedings on Wednesday (Feb 7) to hear the new charges and for the prosecution to argue for Ng’s bail to be revoked, it emerged in the prosecution’s submissions that the 36-year-old bankrupt is said to have a secret fund of about US$15 million stashed away in an HSBC account.
The money-laundering charge accuses him of attempting in November 2023 to sell a Bussorah Street shophouse – allegedly bought with S$5 million in criminal proceeds – to a Lin Jianbin to raise S$500,000.
The month before that, he allegedly aided an unknown woman to commit forgery by signing an option to purchase for the property, which is off Beach Road.
The charge said that there was an intention to mislead the potential buyer into thinking that the registered proprietor of the house had endorsed the transaction.
Ng was already charged last week with one count of money laundering for another attempt last October to sell that shophouse to another prospective buyer, Gan Wee Pin, also to obtain S$500,000.
All in, there are at least 108 charges against Ng, including the latest two.
Submissions filed by the prosecution team led by Gordon Oh disclose that the shophouse has been barred from being sold because it was said to have been bought by Ng with money from his alleged criminal activities.
The Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) has agreed to its sale – provided that the proceeds are held by the white-collar crime buster to satisfy claims by Ng’s creditors or by the private trustee for his bankruptcy estate.
The prosecution, applying for Ng’s bail to be revoked, argued on Wednesday that his risk of absconding has risen, given his access to substantial funds and possession of fake identity documents.
A CAD officer alleged in an affidavit that Ng’s stash of cash in the HSBC account is under a false identity, based on what Ng told a creditor who had lent him at least S$1.75 million.
The CAD has uncovered forged foreign identification papers from Ng’s electronic devices; the HSBC funds are under a fake identity appearing to be of Slovenian origin, with the name, Materska Vitomir.
The court granted the prosecution’s application to revoke Ng’s bail – an “unprecedented” amount of S$6 million – on the grounds that money-laundering charges are non-bailable, and also because of his flight risk.
In addition, Ng is said to have committed the latest offences while out on bail.
His counsel, Johannes Hadi of the law practice Eugene Thuraisingam, told the court that the allegations have not been proven, but added that he has received no instruction on any bail application for now.
If convicted on the money-laundering charges, Ng could be fined up to S$500,000 and imprisoned up to 10 years on each charge.
The court fixed his case for a pre-trial conference on Mar 8.
Ng was represented by Davinder Singh Chambers when he was first charged in 2021, and then by Dentons Rodyk and Davidson in 2023, when his bail amount was upped to S$6 million from S$4 million.
In December 2022, Ng was declared bankrupt upon application by the liquidators of his companies in a bid to recover S$416.5 million and US$17.7 million from his personal assets.
Separately, Ng has two outstanding traffic charges, accusing him of using a cellphone while driving on Sep 6, 2022 and on Apr 17, 2023.
As he was already convicted of this offence once in the past, he stands to be fined up to S$2,000, given a jail term of up to a year, or both, if convicted on the two recent counts.
The accused faces another 105 counts in relation to a nickel-trading investment scheme offered by his companies, Envy Asset Management and Envy Global Trading.
The charges are for cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery, fraudulent trading and money laundering.
