Gold bars and designer handbags up for auction after £1.7bn laundering gang jailed

Telegraph

a day ago

A haul of gold bars, Hermes handbags, designer watches and jade necklaces seized in Singapore's biggest money laundering case is to be sold at auction.
Ten members of a Chinese crime syndicate that had set up a remote gambling ring in the Philippines involving goods worth £1.7 billion were arrested in simultaneous raids across Singapore in August 2023.
Two of the suspects jumped off the second-floor balcony of a house trying to flee arrest.
The team of 400 officers impounded a fleet of high-end cars and seized 152 properties in expensive neighbourhoods.
In total, around £577,435,000 of assets belonging to the gang were seized.
The nine men, and one woman, all from Fujian province on the east coast of China, were sentenced in June last year to between 13 months and 17 months imprisonment for money laundering and related offences.
Police announced on Tuesday that 466 items, including 50 branded handbags from Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Dior and Chanel, 58 gold bars, and 14 designer watches were to be handed over to the international consulting company Deloitte.
Deloitte is intending to sell the items over auction and the proceeds, along with the forfeited cash, will go into Singapore's consolidated fund, the equivalent of a bank account held by the government, police said.
Each gold bar weighs 1kg and is worth approximately £80,000.
The gang's operation began to fall apart after its ringleader Su Jianfeng, a 36-year-old Vanuatu national, aroused suspicions from his bank about the source of his income when he deposited huge sums of money into his accounts.
Jianfeng and his wife, Chen Qiuyan, had built a sprawling empire of companies and a fortune estimated at £107,000,000.
A fraud investigation revealed that Jianfeng had submitted false documents to his bank to try and verify his income.
Investigators uncovered how Su Jianfeng was involved in an unlawful remote gambling business overseas, in which he ran and promoted gambling websites.
He was arrested in the raids with his co-conspirators and charged with four counts of money laundering offences, eight counts of fraudulently using a forged document, one count of employing a foreigner without a valid work pass and one count of abetment of making a false declaration in an application for a work pass.
In a search of his home, police found £320,000 in cash locked in a safe. He was sentenced to 17 months imprisonment.
Many of the gang members had multiple passports from Cambodia, Vanuatu, Cyprus and Dominica.
All the gang members were deported from Singapore.
Su Haijin, a Cypriot national, was even photographed at dinners with Singaporean ministers and a ruling party lawmaker.
Two former bankers from Citibank and Swiss private bank, Julius Baer, were accused of helping the gang members illegally apply for loans with forged documents.
A further 17 suspects are wanted in connection with the case and are on the run.
David Chew, director of the commercial affairs department, the police investigating arm for white collar crime, said: 'To protect Singapore's financial system, the police will spare no effort to detect abuse, arrest the criminals and deprive them of their ill-gotten gains. In Singapore, these criminals will not find safe harbour for themselves or their wealth.'