Last offender in S$3 billion money laundering case gets 16 months' jail
Wang Dehai, an accused charged over the billion-dollar money laundering case in Singapore, pleaded guilty in court on June 7, 2024.
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BY
KOH WAN TING
Published June 7, 2024Updated June 7, 2024
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SINGAPORE — The last of 10 individuals prosecuted in the S$3 billion money laundering case pleaded guilty in court on Friday (June 7) and was handed the longest jail term so far at 16 months.
Wang Dehai, 35, faced six charges, two of which are related to money laundering, while the rest are employment offences under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act.
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The Cypriot pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing S$2,299,950 in cash that was suspected to be benefits from illicit remote gambling offences.
The other money laundering charge was for using around S$23 million in suspected criminal proceeds to buy a condominium unit in Orchard Road.
The two employment offences were for falsely representing himself as a brand manager and a business consultant for Craft Digital between 2018 and 2022 to obtain employment passes, and for hiring a housekeeper without a valid work pass.
These charges were taken into consideration for his sentencing.
For the money laundering charge that was proceeded on, Wang could have been jailed up to three years, or fined up to S$150,000, or both.
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Wang was nabbed with nine other foreigners during simultaneous raids islandwide in August 2023. He is the last one to have pleaded guilty in court.
Those that came before Wang have had millions of dollars in assets, including luxury goods and properties, seized and surrendered.
For Wang, around S$54 million in assets, including cash, cryptocurrency, luxury items and property were seized or subjected to prohibition of disposal orders. He has agreed to surrender about 90 per cent of these assets.
ACCUSED PART OF ILLEGAL REMOTE GAMBLING BUSINESS
The court heard that Wang was involved in a illicit business based in the Philippines from 2012. The business offered remote gambling services to people in China, which is an offence. He worked in the customer service side of the business before becoming a promoter in 2014.As a promoter, he was given a 3 per cent share in the annual profit of the business. His total income in 2016 amounted to more than S$15 million. Wang left the operation in 2022 and received a final payout of around S$1.38 million.
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He recruited his cousin Su Wenqiang into the business. The others involved were Wang's brother-in-law Su Yongcan, Wang's cousin Wang Huoqiang, and Su Jianfeng, who is Su Yongcan's brother-in-law.
Su Yongcan and Wang Huoqiang, who are both Cambodian nationals, are on the run, while Su Wenqiang and Su Jianfeng have been convicted in Singapore's court.
Wang and his family relocated to Singapore in 2018, as he wanted his children to be educated here. Investigations found that he had transferred proceeds from his illicit gambling business into Singapore.
On Aug 15, 2023, the day of Wang's arrest, a Rimowa luggage containing S$2,299,950 in cash was found at Wang's home.
He initially lied that he did not know the contents of the luggage, which he claimed belonged to his wife. He also provided inconsistent accounts in statements, first claiming that the money came in part from selling off his cryptocurrency in Singapore, and from Su Yongcan, or from winning mahjong games.
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In another statement, he claimed the money all came from Su Yongcan, who had cash delivered in a suitcase by an unknown person in the Orchard area at the end of October 2022. Wang lied that the money was a loan to him.
He was unable to account for the source of the money.
SENTENCING ARGUMENTS
The prosecution, represented by Deputy Public Prosecutors David Koh and Louis Ngia, argued for 16 to 17 months' jail for Wang.Mr Ngia cited three aggravating factors: That the offences involved a transnational syndicate, that the amount was substantial, and that Wang's conduct reflected a broader abuse of Singapore’s financial infrastructure.
Comparing the sum in Wang's proceeded charge to the co-accused's cases that came before him, the prosecution said that individual and similar money laundering charges involving S$1 million to S$1.47 million had resulted in 13-month jail terms.
"In this light, it is only fair and just that a higher sentence be imposed on the accused for his offence, given that it involves a significantly higher sum of (around) S$2.3 million," the prosecution said.
Pointing out that the total amount across Wang's charges exceeded S$25 million, the prosecution said its proposed sentence was "fair".
Wang's lawyer Megan Chia, however, argued that for a few of the previous convictions, the total amounts involved added up to more than Wang's S$25 million.
Unlike the other accused, Wang did not face any forgery charges, and had not transferred money through corporate intermediaries, said Ms Chia.
He had voluntarily surrendered most of his seized assets, including his family home in Singapore, which showed his remorse, said the defence lawyer, who added that her client eventually dropped out of the business when he moved to Singapore.
"All he and his wife genuinely wanted to do when moving into Singapore was to provide a good environment for his children to grow up and secure top-notch education for his children," said Ms Chia.
'FLAGRANTLY CHOSE TO FLOUT' SINGAPORE'S LAWS
However, District Judge Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz took issue with this point, arguing that Wang had offended for several years before he was arrested, which went against the defence's portrayal of his life in Singapore as "uneventful".She addressed the point further in sentencing remarks.
"The seeming implication that Mr Wang was, by the time of his residence in Singapore, a benign individual who had simply sought to build a home in this country with his family blithely ignores the objective evidence before this court," said the judge.
"In reality, the charges as a whole disclose that Mr Wang continued to sustain himself in Singapore with property reasonably suspected of representing the benefits of his criminal conduct."
Wang had also repeatedly defrauded Singapore authorities in his employment offences, the judge said.
On the defence's point that Wang and his family will be expelled from Singapore and are likely to be barred from re-entering, the judge said: "I can only say that Mr Wang sealed his family’s fate when he deliberately and flagrantly chose to flout the laws of this country.
"Ultimately, it is an established principle of law that the natural collateral consequences that follow when an individual commits an offence do not serve as effective mitigation. I thus place no weight on this in sentencing."
Of the nine who pleaded guilty before Wang, eight have been sentenced to jail terms of between 12 and 15 months while one has yet to be sentenced.
Vanuatu national Su Jianfeng, 36, pleaded guilty on Thursday but had his sentencing reserved until Monday. The prosecution argued for 17 to 18 months' jail for Su, the longest term sought so far for an accused person in this case.
Su's sentencing will conclude the multi-billion dollar case that has cast the problem of money laundering into the spotlight. CNA
