$3b money laundering case: 2 years’ jail for former bank employee implicated in saga

The bank employee whose role in a forgery case in 2021 contributed to the largest money laundering probe in Singapore was sentenced on Oct 23 to two years’ jail.

Wang Qiming, 28, had pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery, one count of money laundering and one for the obstruction of justice.

The Chinese national had forged documents to conceal the source of funds belonging to Cambodian national Su Baolin, who was one of the 10 foreigners arrested in 2023 in the $3 billion money laundering probe.

Six other charges, including for forging a document to allow money launderer Vang Shuiming to deposit $1 million into Vang’s Citibank account, were taken into consideration for sentencing.

Wang’s lawyer, Mr Vinit Chhabra from Vinit Chhabra Law Corporation, had argued for seven to 11 months’ jail, saying that it was disproportionate for his client’s sentence to be longer than that of the convicted money launderers.

The 10 foreigners were jailed for between 13 and 17 months in 2024.

Although Wang was not named earlier, the Government had revealed that the money laundering probe was sparked by suspicious activities detected in 2021, specifically the use of forged documents to back up the source of funds in bank accounts.

Financial institutions subsequently filed reports of suspicious transactions, leading to the start of separate police investigations in early 2022.

Wang, who was employed as a relationship manager at Citibank, had clients that included three of the 10 foreign nationals implicated in the case – Vang, Su Haijin and Su Baolin.

Court documents showed that Wang started working with Su Baolin in December 2020 when the Cambodian national wanted to open a bank account with Citibank.

The bank employee eventually became his relationship manager in January 2021.

On Dec 8, 2020, Wang helped Su Baolin arrange the sale of 1,499,980 units of cryptocurrency USDT in exchange for Singapore dollars through a third-party sales agent.

This was a private arrangement between Su Baolin and Wang, and was not done through Citibank’s platforms.

Wang was told to let the sales agent know that the proceeds should be deposited into Su Baolin’s Standard Chartered bank account, but indicated as coming from a remittance company.

However, the sales proceeds were reflected as coming from a personal bank account owned by a person identified in court documents as “Se Liang”.

Su Baolin then demanded that Wang create a loan agreement to account for the deposit in the Standard Chartered bank account.

Wang agreed and created the false loan agreement. Court documents did not indicate the source of the purported loan.

A week later, Su Baolin told Wang to collect a portion of sale proceeds of the cryptocurrency from the sales agent. Wang collected $481,678 in cash and delivered it to Su Baolin’s residence in Singapore.

When questioned by the police about the cash on Sept 14, 2023, Wang was shown WhatsApp messages he had exchanged with Su Baolin and asked to explain them.

He failed to satisfactorily account for the cash, and told police officers “I cannot remember” when questioned.

As a relationship manager with Citibank, Wang’s duties included assisting his clients who wanted to open accounts at Citibank, and coordinating with them when there were queries from the bank’s anti-money laundering team.

In instances where large sums of money were deposited into Citibank accounts in Singapore, the anti-money laundering team would make a request for information, asking the client to provide documentation for the transaction.

One of Wang’s clients, Chinese national Xie Yuyan, had received two separate sums of $999,980 from a depositor in Indonesia named “Surya Citra R” on Jan 22 and Jan 27, 2021.

Due to the large sums of money involved, the anti-money laundering team raised a request for information through Wang to ask Xie about the source of the funds.

Instead of finding out the true source of the funds from his client, Wang responded to the request for information by saying the deposit came from a remittance company, and he said the funds were for the client’s investments in Singapore.

He then fabricated two remittance receipts for the transactions in February 2021, and sent them to Citibank’s anti-money laundering team.

Court documents showed that Wang had forged the documents by searching for an unrelated remittance receipt online and used Microsoft Word to create the receipts corresponding to the two transactions.

Wang also forged the date on a remittance receipt for another client, Chinese national Xu Yongkun, when his account received $1,999,980 from a depositor in Indonesia named “PT Fajar Sukses Batam” on May 19, 2021.

The original receipt he received from Xu indicated an earlier transaction date.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Louis Ngia said Wang knew that this remittance receipt was suspicious and would not be accepted by Citibank’s anti-money laundering team as documentary evidence of the source of funds of the transaction.

“(He) did not raise this suspicious document to the anti-money laundering team. Instead, (he) agreed to forge a remittance receipt for submission to Citibank on Xu Yongkun’s behalf,” added the prosecutor.

Deleted WhatsApp

Police officers turned up at his home on Oct 12, 2021, and knocked on his door for 20 minutes.

They eventually managed to contact Wang on his phone at about 9am.

After seizing his phone for investigations, investigators found that Wang had deleted the WhatsApp platform from his phone, which erased all records of WhatsApp messages on the device.

DPP Ngia said: “As a result, the police were unable to recover the relevant WhatsApp messages with his clients from his mobile phone.

“In particular, his WhatsApp messages regarding his transactions with Xie Yuyan, and those with Xu Yongkun regarding the forged remittance receipt, could not be recovered by the police.”

The prosecution argued for Wang to be jailed for between 24 months and 30 months, noting that he had “turned his duty on its head” by not alerting the bank of suspicious transactions and forging documents to cheat the bank.

DPP Ngia said: “Across the totality of his offending conduct, he forged and/or submitted forged transaction documents to Citibank on seven occasions for his five clients, in respect of deposits totalling more than $8.5 million.

“He thereby defeated the bank’s anti-money laundering checks on those transactions, and exacerbated the risks of introducing tainted monies into Singapore.”

Wang’s lawyer, Mr Vinit, said a sentence of seven to 11 months’ jail was appropriate. He said the remittance receipts Wang created as documentary evidence actually reflected transactions which were in Citibank’s records.

“No loss was suffered by anybody, neither the customer nor the bank,” said Mr Vinit.

As for the money laundering charge, Mr Vinit said Wang did not know about Su Baolin’s source of wealth in December 2020.

He was also not aware that Su Baolin was a money launderer. The lawyer added that Wang did not receive any commission from helping the Cambodian national, with whom Mr Vinit said Wang became acquainted because his client knew Wang’s father.

In his sentencing remarks, District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt said Wang’s conduct was nothing short of egregious, as he had used his position to get past the bank’s anti-money laundering checks and safeguards, and deceive the bank into thinking the funds were legitimate.

The fact that the bank suffered no financial losses was a neutral factor at best, he said, as it does not account for the reputational harm and trouble caused.

Addressing the defence’s claim that Wang did not know Su Baojin was a money launderer, Judge Chay said that money launderers “could not have a label stuck to their head” to indicate they were money launderers.

Mr Vinit said Wang would be appealing against his sentence, but agreed to start his jail term on Oct 23.

Source: The Business Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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