Crooks, Fraudsters and Conmen
Fascinated with real-life criminals who have (almost) made off with ill-gotten gains, Senior Librarian Sharon Teng investigates the cases that have made headlines in Singapore.
As an avid reader of the crime genre, my reading mainly consists of detective yarns, legal thrillers, police procedurals and true crime stories. I’m particularly fascinated by real-life cases of scoundrels who have pulled off clever scams and gotten away scot-free, especially in the realm of financial crime. It is equally intriguing to read about the process of how the authorities investigate these crimes, piece together a mindboggling jigsaw of clues and eventually bring the criminals to justice.
Audacious and creative swindlers like J.D. McMahon, builder of the “world’s littlest skyscrapper”, Victor Lustig, two-time “seller” of the Eiffel Tower, Bernard Madoff, the Ponzi scheme fraudster and Frank William Abagnale Jr, the infamous imposter who inspired the movie, Catch Me If You Can, spring to mind.
Singapore has also seen its share of criminals who absconded with eye-watering sums of money and made sensational news headlines. White-collar crimes, scams and cybercrimes constituted 75 percent of the 34,605 crimes reported to the police from January to June 2023.¹ The nemesis of these white-collar crooks is the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD), which was set up in 1984 to investigate “a spectrum of commercial and financial crimes and safeguard Singapore’s integrity as a world-class financial and commercial centre”.²
I’m not the only one who loves the genre. There are plenty of books about crime and criminals in the library. Let me share some of Singapore’s most high-profile financial crime cases involving stock market-rigging, embezzlement, fraud and forgery.
Nick Leeson
The candid no-holds-barred autobiography tells the story of how derivatives trader Nick Leeson, then 28 years old, forced Baring, one of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious merchant banks, into receivership in 1995.
The Baring Futures report presents the findings of investigations into the collapse of Baring Futures (Singapore) and was released on 17 October 1995. Together, these two publications uncover the extent of the fraud Leeson had committed over four years, the colossal monetary losses involved and the stunning conclusion that the Baring management were partially culpable for the collapse of the bank.
I was captivated by Leeson’s engaging and confessional tone when describing the chaotic trading floor, the appalling lack of accountability demonstrated by Baring’s senior management and a vivid recounting of how Leeson’s life went into a tailspin as he faced unbearable pressures trying to cover up mounting losses from his trades.
The debacle started in 1992, when Leeson began using the bank’s error account, 88888, to hide trading mistakes while simultaneously using it for unauthorised trading in Japanese Government Bonds and Nikkei 225 futures and options. As assistant director and general manager of Baring Futures (Singapore) (BFS), Leeson conveniently had oversight of both the front (trading) and back (processing) office. A blurred reporting structure, lax supervision by his bosses and Baring’s inept senior management afforded Leeson the leeway to snowball his losses to over $300 million by the end of December 1994. The final coup de grâce came when the Nikkei index plummeted on 23 February 1995 after the 17 January earthquake in Kobe. Unable to sustain the losses that had now spiraled into a jaw-dropping $2.2 billion, Baring in London collapsed, was forced into bankruptcy on 26 February 1995 and taken over by the Dutch finance group Internationale Nederlanden Groep (ING) on 6 March.
A panicked Leeson and his wife Lisa fled to Kuala Lumpur on 23 February 1995 and then on to Sabah and Frankfurt, only to be detained upon arrival at Frankfurt airport on 2 March. Brought back to Singapore on 23 November 1995 via the extradition treaty with Germany, Leeson was charged in court on 1 December on two charges of fraud and forgery and sentenced to jail for six and a half years. In the aftermath, amendments were made to the Futures Trading Act and the regulatory framework for futures trading was shored up.
Elyamani Khamis
Variously described as a Saudi Arabian prince and a Moroccan millionaire, Elyamani Khamis’ seemingly luxurious lifestyle, accompanied by women and fast cars, gave credence to his claims of royalty. A Moroccan by birth, Khamis started several short-lived businesses in Europe before heading to Singapore in 1987 in search of new money-making ventures.
Khamis aspired to join the ranks of the upper echelons in high society and frequented discos and nightclubs where the rich congregated. His Marina Village project featuring high-end restaurants, pubs and the grandiose three-storey Khameleon disco was a big flop despite drawing in crowds initially. His ambitious $95-million-dollar plan to develop a five-star hotel and a village-cum-bazaar on Sentosa also went up in smoke.
Wanted for questioning in Norway in relation to $72 million dollars worth of unauthorised credit letters, Khamis was subsequently arrested by the CAD in July 1991 for suspected fraud. Due to insufficient evidence however, charges were dropped after three months of thorough investigations. In November 1991, Khamis was declared a bankrupt after Standard Chartered Bank filed a bankruptcy suit against him for defaulting on the repayment of a $50 million loan and the three plots of land which Marina Village occupied were put up for sale by the bank on 3 December 1991.
Buried up to his neck in debt and with his business reputation in tatters, Khamis secretly slipped away to Morocco with his family in November 1992. In the same month, the Norwegian police obtained an international warrant of arrest against Khamis in relation to the $72 million dollars of credit letters.³ The following month, Khamis was also placed on a warrant of arrest in Singapore after failing to turn up at the Official Assignee’s office handling his bankruptcy.⁴
In an unexpected development to the saga, Khamis’s ex-business associate, Henry Wee, filed a bankruptcy petition in early January 1993 against Khamis’s wife, Dorte Khamis, a Norwegian, for a purported five-figure personal loan he had given to her.⁵ In August 1993, Mrs Khamis was also placed on the local police’s wanted list.⁶ As the couple’s whereabouts remain unknown to this day, they are still regarded as fugitives from the law.
Joachim Kang
“If you can secure the evidence and provide the motive for the acts, the facts speak for themselves. For commercial crimes, there was usually a paper trail of crime and wrongdoing”, Loh Yoon Min, CAD’s lead investigator for the NOL case.
From Koh Buck Song, How Not to Make Money: Inside Stories from Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department (Singapore: Singapore Police Force, 2005), 27–8. (Call no. R 364.168095957 KOH)
This book unveils 10 landmark cases successfully closed by the CAD over an 18-year period (1985–2003) through dogged and meticulous investigation, rigorous interviews with suspects and witnesses and the sacrifice of sleep for many months-on-end for the investigative teams. These include the 1993 Nepture-Orient Lines (NOL) case, the 1995 Biscuit King case and the Ten Million Dollar Man case in 2002.
Father Joachim Kang Hock Chai’s 2003 embezzlement case was the first in Singapore that involved a religious authority figure. Committing the twin sins of greed and covetousness, Kang squirreled away $5.149 million from the Church of St Teresa’s building funds over nine years (1994–2002) and used his ill-gotten gains to acquire two condominium apartments in Singapore and four in Penang, Malaysia. The wages for his sins were a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
Teo Cheng Kiat
The 13 cases featured in this book show that the lust for money can be such a powerful motivator that people brazenly cheat, swindle and embezzle to pad their bank accounts. With criminals of varying ages, socio-economic backgrounds and occupations, there appears to be no way of telling who the crooks are.
Teo Cheng Kiat’s misappropriation of a whopping $35 million from Singapore Airlines over a span of 13 years (1987–2000) was discovered during an ad-hoc audit conducted in 2000. Teo‘s job involved processing cabin crew allowances and the lack of internal checks and verification enabled Teo to illegally amass seven private properties, two luxury cars, jewellery, branded watches and designer goods. This was accomplished through the brazen and methodical submission of fraudulent cabin crew allowance claims and falsified accounts.
Convicted of 10 counts of criminal breach of trust on 30 June 2000, Teo was sent to prison for two years, while his wife, Tan Bee Lay, was sentenced to 18 months for aiding and abetting her husband.
T. T. Durai
High-profile white-collar crimes share the limelight with smaller-scale cheating cases in this volume covering nine cases in total. The following, in particular, caused a public outcry in Singapore when it was uncovered.
Singapore’s largest charity organisation, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), found itself embroiled in a sensational financial scandal that stretched over three years (2005–2007). In July 2005, NKF and its then chief executive, T. T. Durai, sued the Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) over an article published on 19 April 2004, which cast aspersions on how donors’ funds were being used.
During the course of the trial, scandalous details emerged such as Durai’s astronomical annual renumeration (between $550,000 and $600,000), his first-class travel privileges, the installation of a gold-plated tap in Durai’s private bathroom in his office, false declaration of NKF’s financial reserves, the fudging of patient numbers, the fleet of eight cars and drivers that stood at the ready for the use of Durai and six other officers and Durai’s undeclared ties with an NKF board member who had a stake in a call centre contracted by the charity. These revelations resulted in the defamation case being dropped on the second day of the trial and the resignation of Durai and the board of directors two days later.
Durai was later arrested on 17 April 2006 for approving the payment of $20,000 from NKF to an interior designer firm for services which had not been rendered. Found guilty, Durai was sentenced to three months in prison on 21 June.
These published cases show that in the end, crime does not pay. In Singapore, we have agencies such as the CAD and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) to help ensure that corruption is rooted out at all levels in the commercial and financial sectors.
Sharon is a librarian with the Arts and General Reference team at the National Library and believes that law is a great leveler and is without prejudice in the face of class, wealth or social status.
[1] “Written Reply to Parliamentary Question on Percentage of White Collar Crimes, Scam and Cybercrime Cases Against the Total Number of Crimes in the First Half of 2023,” Ministry of Home Affairs. Accessed 28 January 2024.
[2] Koh Buck Song, How Not to Make Money: Inside Stories from Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department (Singapore: Singapore Police Force, 2005), 1. (Call no. R 364.168095957 KOH); “Commercial Affairs Department,” Singapore Police Force. Accessed 8 January 2024.
[3] Dawn Tan, “Interpol member countries now have warrant on Khamis,” Business Times, 26 November 1992, 2. (From NewspaperSG).
[4] Dawn Tan, “Official Assignee’s claim may affect Khamis creditors,” Business Times, 12 December 1992, 2. (From NewspaperSG)
[5] Dawn Tan, “Bankruptcy petition filed in High Court on Khamis’ wife,” Business Times, 13 January 1993, 2. (From NewspaperSG)
[6] Gerry de Silva, “Fugitive Khamis’ wife wanted by police,” Straits Times, 18 August 1993, 36. (From NewspaperSG)
