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Feb 13, 2009
Jailed: $35m swindler <!--10 min-->
He admits to charges involving US$23 million in fake-trade swindle <!-- headline one : start --> <!-- headline one : end --> <!-- Author --> <!-- show image if available --> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr></tr> <tr> </tr> <tr> </tr> <tr> </tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold">By Elena Chong, Courts Correspondent
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From 2001 to 2007, Ang bought and sold worthless memory chips and created fake orders and invoices to get payment from banks. -- ST PHOTO: WONG KWAI CHOW
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THROUGH most of the 1990s, entrepreneur Kelvin Ang Ah Peng rode the crest of a wave as his company traded in memory chips and recycled used ones for sale at a good price. Hints of a rot surfaced in 2003, when the Monetary Authority of Singapore swooped in and stopped the initial public offering (IPO) of his company, EC-Asia International (ECI), cold in its tracks.
<table valign="top" width="200" align="left"> <tbody><tr><td class="padr8"> <!-- Vodcast --> <!-- Background Story --> <style type="text/css"> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </style> About the case
THE ACCUSED
Kelvin Ang Ah Peng, 44, has been chief executive officer of EC-Asia International (ECI) since October 2002.
</td></tr> </tbody></table> Yesterday, Ang, 44, was jailed for 14 years for having swindled banks of US$23 million (S$35 million) and laundering these proceeds through Hong Kong. The Australian-listed ECI is now being liquidated, and Ang was declared a bankrupt last year.
He was hauled to court last October on 687 charges involving US$290 million; last month, he pleaded guilty to 30 charges - 28 for cheating and two for money-laundering and falsifying revenues in ECI's IPO prospectus.
His is a story which has followed the ebb and flow of the integrated circuit (IC) chip business: When he started ECI in 1993, IC chips were expensive, so his business did well. A major earthquake in Taiwan in 1999 totalled the IC chip factories there. Production halted and the market price of IC chips soared even higher. The bubble burst the following year, when the Taiwan factories recovered. Several chip businesses folded.
In 2001, as ECI struggled to keep afloat, Ang started abusing its credit facilities. Between that year and early 2007, he bought and sold worthless memory chips and created fake orders and invoices to receive payment from banks. Deputy Public Prosecutor David Chew Siong Tai said that, to secure credit in the absence of incoming orders, Ang fashioned an elaborate scheme with the help of Hong Kong firms. He got ECI's longstanding partners there to issue the necessary trade documents and to circulate IC chips and money between Hong Kong and Singapore.
A Singapore company, Oki Semiconductor Singapore, was roped in to give the transactions a ring of authenticity. Chips were actually shipped in these sham transactions as if they were bona fide business trades. The reality: These were worthless, defective chips due for scrapping by ECI, said DPP Chew. In November 2006, Ang, when asked about ECI's unusually large inventory in Hong Kong and the huge debts owed by the firm's Hong Kong 'customers', confessed to an ECI subsidiary's director that 90 per cent of the inventory did not exist and that its billings were all faked. He turned himself in to the Commercial Affairs Department five months later. His lawyer, Senior Counsel Sant Singh, described him as a self-made man who developed a niche market for memory chips here. He added that the father of four never stood to gain personally from the credit extended by the banks, since the money went into saving ECI. This was a man who, at his peak, ran a 12,000 sq ft office and hired 150 people. He has since been forced to sell his District 10 bungalow and move his family into a relative's Housing Board flat.
[email protected]
Feb 13, 2009
Jailed: $35m swindler <!--10 min-->
He admits to charges involving US$23 million in fake-trade swindle <!-- headline one : start --> <!-- headline one : end --> <!-- Author --> <!-- show image if available --> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr></tr> <tr> </tr> <tr> </tr> <tr> </tr> <tr><td colspan="2" class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold">By Elena Chong, Courts Correspondent
</td></tr> <tr valign="bottom"> <td width="330">
</td> <td width="10">
From 2001 to 2007, Ang bought and sold worthless memory chips and created fake orders and invoices to get payment from banks. -- ST PHOTO: WONG KWAI CHOW
</td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->
THROUGH most of the 1990s, entrepreneur Kelvin Ang Ah Peng rode the crest of a wave as his company traded in memory chips and recycled used ones for sale at a good price. Hints of a rot surfaced in 2003, when the Monetary Authority of Singapore swooped in and stopped the initial public offering (IPO) of his company, EC-Asia International (ECI), cold in its tracks.
<table valign="top" width="200" align="left"> <tbody><tr><td class="padr8"> <!-- Vodcast --> <!-- Background Story --> <style type="text/css"> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </style> About the case
THE ACCUSED
Kelvin Ang Ah Peng, 44, has been chief executive officer of EC-Asia International (ECI) since October 2002.
</td></tr> </tbody></table> Yesterday, Ang, 44, was jailed for 14 years for having swindled banks of US$23 million (S$35 million) and laundering these proceeds through Hong Kong. The Australian-listed ECI is now being liquidated, and Ang was declared a bankrupt last year.
He was hauled to court last October on 687 charges involving US$290 million; last month, he pleaded guilty to 30 charges - 28 for cheating and two for money-laundering and falsifying revenues in ECI's IPO prospectus.
His is a story which has followed the ebb and flow of the integrated circuit (IC) chip business: When he started ECI in 1993, IC chips were expensive, so his business did well. A major earthquake in Taiwan in 1999 totalled the IC chip factories there. Production halted and the market price of IC chips soared even higher. The bubble burst the following year, when the Taiwan factories recovered. Several chip businesses folded.
In 2001, as ECI struggled to keep afloat, Ang started abusing its credit facilities. Between that year and early 2007, he bought and sold worthless memory chips and created fake orders and invoices to receive payment from banks. Deputy Public Prosecutor David Chew Siong Tai said that, to secure credit in the absence of incoming orders, Ang fashioned an elaborate scheme with the help of Hong Kong firms. He got ECI's longstanding partners there to issue the necessary trade documents and to circulate IC chips and money between Hong Kong and Singapore.
A Singapore company, Oki Semiconductor Singapore, was roped in to give the transactions a ring of authenticity. Chips were actually shipped in these sham transactions as if they were bona fide business trades. The reality: These were worthless, defective chips due for scrapping by ECI, said DPP Chew. In November 2006, Ang, when asked about ECI's unusually large inventory in Hong Kong and the huge debts owed by the firm's Hong Kong 'customers', confessed to an ECI subsidiary's director that 90 per cent of the inventory did not exist and that its billings were all faked. He turned himself in to the Commercial Affairs Department five months later. His lawyer, Senior Counsel Sant Singh, described him as a self-made man who developed a niche market for memory chips here. He added that the father of four never stood to gain personally from the credit extended by the banks, since the money went into saving ECI. This was a man who, at his peak, ran a 12,000 sq ft office and hired 150 people. He has since been forced to sell his District 10 bungalow and move his family into a relative's Housing Board flat.
[email protected]
