Lecture - Contract Law and Negligence Law

This 1 day lecture was conducted 4 times for National Kidney Foundation staff.

It covers the basic laws relating to Contract Law including formation, implied terms, exemption clauses, termination of contracts and remedies for breach of contract including claims for damages.

For in-house lectures, contact me at **terence_tan@aol.com (remove the asterisks).

 Lectures:  Consumer and Investment Fraud

I conduct the above course (a 1 day lecture with case studies) for the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA).

Topics covered -

    Famous fraud cases - eg Bernard Madoff

    Common types of consumer Fraud

    Common type of investment Fraud

    Warning signs of fraud

    Criminal laws relating to fraud

For in-house lectures, contact me (Terence Tan) at my email account - **terence_tan@aol.com (remove asterisks).

Shocking case of fraud of wife that tried to cheat husband of his $25m inheritance

This was a case that was fought up to the highest court in Singapore last year (the Court of Appeal).

The husband is from a rich family and owned 2 apartments given to him by his father. After his mother suddenly died, his lawyer wife persuaded him to sign a declaration of trust (DOT) in favour of their 2 year old son. She lies to him that the DOT will only be effective when the husband dies, and meanwhile he has full control of his assets.

The DOT is a legal document where a person states that everything he owns, he is holding for someone else, in this case, their 2 year old son. If the DOT is valid, the husband would be penniless, and all his assets would be controlled by whoever was taking care of his son.

The husband later goes to court and explains the wife's trickery. He also shows that he was very upset about the death of his mother and had no other persons to confide in except his wife. The court allows him to cancel the declaration of trust.

To clarify the story about the husband's mother, she was described as a socialite by the local newspaper. Her assets included 2 good class bungalows and her estate was worth about $50 million. Her will divided her estate between the husband in the lawsuit and his sister, so each would stand to inherit $25 million.

Fraud discussion group on whatsapp

I have started a whatsapp discussion group on fraud. We discuss local and foreign cases.

In my chat group are various professionals from various industrries. One of the most respected is a former Managing Partner of one of the Big 4 Audit Firms in Singapore.

If you are interested, send me a whatsapp message at -

Eight Five Two Two - 0590.

I need your full name, and will then add you to the group. Please do not call me.

Terence Tan

Lectures on fraud

I am a lawyer who practices in a small law firm but also provides legal training for different organizations.

My clients include the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore, the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants, Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore and other multi-national corporations.

My lectures cover a wide range of topics including Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law, Procurement fraud and corruption, Investment and Corruption Fraud, and Protecting Company Secrets and Customer Databases.

These lectures are not theory classes but practical guides to real life problems and safeguards to avoid legal troubles.

If your organization or company requires lectures on employee fraud, etc, contact my assistant patricia@ndgsingapore.com for a no-obligation discussion on your training needs.

Dealing with post dated cheques

Paying a creditor with a post dated cheque which later bounces is normally not a criminal offence. Often, the issuer of the cheque is a company. When the cheque bounces, it is still difficult to sue the company directors.

Problem - company owes you money. The director issues a company cheque which is post-dated. What should you do?

Solution - get a promise from the director - he promises that the cheque will clear. In return, you promise not to sue the company at this time or you promise not to evict the company from its rental premises at this time (if you are the landlord).

This is called a collateral contract. You have promised something to the director and he has promised something in return, If the cheque later bounces, you have a good case in court to sue the director personally.

If you have legal queries, you are welcome to contact me - Terence Tan, Alpha Law
email - my gmail account is terencebctan - fill in the rest yourself.

Accountant jailed for major fraud - Ewe Pang Kooi case

In 2019, Ewe Pang Kooi, a chartered accountant in Singapore, was jailed for about 25 years for criminal breach of trust. The main charges related to his work as a liquidator of several companies. His duty was to collect the assets and pay the company debts. Any surplus would belong to shareholders. Instead, he stole over $40 million. Some might think that this means he has so much money in the bank. However, he was a hardcore gambler, gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars in the local casinos. At first he stole a few million. But later, to cover up the theft, he stole from another client to replace the first loss. This procedure was repeated many times.

The court in following the City Harvest Church case reasoning, held that Ewe was guilty of the more serious form of criminal breach of trust (CBT). This was because he was acting in his professional capacity when he committed the crimes. On the other hand, the 6 City Harvest Church leaders were not acting as professionals when they were directors in charge of the church building fund money. As a result, they were guilty only of the basic offence of CBT and not the more serious form.

Ewe, is about 65 years old. With a 25 year jail term, he will be about 90 years old when he is released. However, with good behaviour, nearly all prisoners can get a 1/3 discount on their jail sentence. This is called remission.

This is the 2nd major fraud case carried out by an accountant, after the Chia Teck Leng case.

Alleged property scam - Profitable Plots

Profitable Plots was a well known company which hired celebrity ex-EPL footballers to advertise their products on TV. 2 of its directors recently had their long jail sentences confirmed by the High Court. However, they were convicted of cheating in relation to the sales of a chemical product called Boron.

It is interesting that although the company was known more for its landbanking practices, no charges were brought in relation to it. Profitable Plots basically sold green belt land (zoned for parks and open spaces) in the United Kingdom to investors on the promise that in future, if the green belt land was rezoned as residential land, then the investors would reap huge profits.

There were many allegations that this was a big scam. However, proving cheating under Singapore's Penal Code is difficult. The most difficult requirement is showing that the person making the promise or statement knew that what he said was untrue. In relation to the landbanking, it would be necessary to show that the company directors knew that the green belt land could NEVER be rezoned into residential land or that the land once rezoned would not be worth much more than the original price. Reports seems to suggest that green belt land had been rezoned in the past although this occurrence is rather rare. If this is the case, then whatever was claimed by the company directors would not be fraudulent. The investors who bought the land probably have legal title issued to them and so they received what they bargained for. Hence, no cheating.

Recent alleged property frauds - Ecohouse

Over the past few months, Singapore newspapers have covered several suspicious property investment scams. One of them, Ecohouse, involved building low cost housing in Brazil. News reports claim that up to $50 million was invested by persons from many different countries in the project. Now however, with many creditors of the company not being paid, audit firm PwC have been appointed as liquidators in the United Kingdom.

The hopes of recovering investors' money is small as legal and liquidation expenses are likely to be large, and at the same time, it is unclear exactly what assets are held by the ccompany.

Ren Ci and Ming Yi - court sentencing

Disgraced monk and former head of charity Ren Ci, Ming Yi, has just been sentenced to 10 months' jail and his assistant Raymond Yeung was sentenced to 9 months. They were both found guilty of several charges related to a unauthorised loan of $50,000 made to Yeung. Many of the charges related to the covering up of the loan such as making false statements to the Commissioner of Charities and creating a false payment voucher. This case is another example of where if the defendants had admitted their wrong when first discovered instead of covering it up, they may well have escaped jail sentences. However, as is often the case, the cover up offences were more numerous than the original offence.

The judge was not impressed with Ming Yi's alleged sacrifices for the charity although a strong mitigation plea was made by his Senior Counsel Andre Yeap. An aggravating factor was that there were numerous acts of trying to cover up the unauthorised loan. Also taken into account was that public trust in the charity system was affected by such acts.

A contrast can be drawn with the case of TT Durai, former Chief Executive Office of the National Kidney Foundation. He was sentenced to a jail term of 3 months under the Prevention of Corruption Act in relation to an incorrect voucher which mischaracterized commission paid to a fund raiser. However, in Durai's case, there was no loss caused to the charity. In Ming Yi's case, the loan was repaid only after investigations had begun.

Tax exemption abuse - director sent to jail

In tax Year of Assessment 2005, the government introduced a tax relief scheme to encourage entrepreneurship. Newly incorporated companies would have tax exemption on the first $100,000 of their income for 3 years.


After learning about this scheme, Gan Oh Boon, director of Steel Formation and Rolling Specialists Ltd (SFRS), proceeded to incorporate 6 companies which then entered into service agreements with SFRS. SFRS supposedly paid these 6 companies for non-existent services. However, the 6 companies had no staff. There was therefore fictitious transactions such as payments for commission fees, technical consultancy fees, marketing consultancy fees, engineering consultancy fees and management fees. In doing so, Gan saved $1.62 million when filing his personal tax returns.

As a result of the tax evasion, Gan was jailed for 2 weeks, fined $8,000 and ordered to pay a penalty of nearly $1 million. His company was fined $24,000 and ordered to pay a penalty of also nearly $1 million. Gan was also punished for omitting to state in his tax returns the benefits he received from SFRS such as car instalments and other personal expenses which were paid for by SFRS.

It is arguable that actually no loss was caused to the government - Gan could have used the 6 companies for entering into transactions with customers and therefore obtained the tax exemption. Instead, it appears that SFRS received customer revenue and from this, deducted the amounts allegedly paid to the 6 companies as its expenses.

His tax advisor and auditor, Chng Chor Tong, was also the subject of tax evasion charges. He was sentenced to 6 months years jail for tax evasion in relation to his own sole proprietorship. He was therefore the first practising certified public accountant to be sentenced to jail for tax evasion.

More jail for dishonest lawyer

Leong Wai Nam, who stole over $93,000 of clients' money, had his jail sentence increased from 3 years, 8 months to 6 1/2 years on appeal to the High Court. Justice Tay Yong Kwang agreed that a stiff sentence was needed to stop the increasing number of dishonest lawyers stealing clients' money.

Leong had pocketed the monies instead of banking them with various other law firms with whom he had revenue sharing arrangements. In addition, he had deceived a businessman by pretending that he could act for the latter even though Leong had no practising certificate.

Fine for forged bank reference letters

Like many banks, American Express Bank (AEB) requires customers who want to open accounts with it to produce letters of reference from other banks stating the length of the customer's relationship with the other banks. This is now standard practice as part of the KYC (Know Your Customers) requirements for banks to stop money laundering and terrorist financing.

Ho Nyat Yeing, who was relationship manager with AEB, found it difficult to obtain these letters. She therefore forged reference letters using blank letterheads from other banks. In court, she pleaded guilty to 11 out of 79 charges. As no loss was caused to any party, shre was fined $41,000.

There are other relationship managers who have been caught in similar situations, with some of them having already been sentenced by the courts.

$1.9m fine for car tax evasion

Ang Hian Koon, owner of Allied Auto was fined over $1.9 million for evading over $700,000 in customs duties and over $200,000 in Goods and Service Tax (GST) in relation to the parallel importing of cars. As he could not pay the amount of the fines, his jail sentence will be 52 weeks. His business had been under-declaring the value of the cars while arranging to pay the foreign supplier in cash during face to face meetings.Although he was not the person submitting the false information to the authorities, he was aware of what was happening. The mastermind of the fraud, Tay Kien Chuan, was fined over $10 million but will serve 8 1/2 years in jail in default of paying the fine.

In total, there are about 15 persons who have been convicted or are awaiting trial for tax evasion in the car parallel import business.

Confession but no corruption conviction

A marine surveyor, Anuar Ahmad, was acquitted for corruption recently. He had been charged with taking a $500 bribe for overlooking a short supply of bunkers (fuel) to a ship. During investigations, he had been told by an Corruption Prevention and Investigation Bureau (CPIB) investigator that if he confessed, he would only be fined and not jailed. Based on this, he confessed to the bribery charge.

During his trial, the judge threw out his confession as it was made under an inducement. The other evidence against him was also rather weak; there were no complaints about the fuel supply. Accordingly, he was acquitted of the charge.

It should be noted that a few years ago, the bunkering industry was hit by a scandal concerning bribes to marine surveyors. They are in charge of checking on the supply of fuel to ships refuelling in Singapore. However, some of them were convicted of taking bribes from fuel suppliers in order to overlook short delivery of fuel or dilution of fuel.


Legal note - under section 24 of the Evidence Act, a confession made under inducement, threat or promise by a person in authority, is inadmissible if the accused was seeking to gain an advantage or avoid an evil.

Credit card fraud - rewards for stopping fraud

A friend who worked on credit card security told me that a retailer's staff who spots and retains a stolen or fake credit card is given a reward of $50. If the credit card holder is detained, the reward is $200. However, this information was provided quite some years ago, so the rewards may now be higher.

A word of caution - detaining a suspected crook carries some risk. It the detention is not justified, a lawsuit for false imprisonment might well be started against the employee and his employer. A lawyer friend and his pregnant wife were once wrongly detained for shoplifting of a briefcase. Although he produced a receipt, this was not accepted. The retailer feared that he had bought one item, then went back to steal an identical item using the first receipt. He later settled his false imprisonment claim with the department store for $800.

Ren Ci saga comes to a close?

Ren Ci is a leading Singapore charity involved in providing free medical services. Its founder-chief and monk Shi Ming-Yi and his aide, Raymond Yeung, were charged in court with various offences relating to a $50,000 loan to the aide. Shi was charged with criminal breach of trust in relation to the $50,000 as loans to Yeung were not covered by the charity's staff loan scheme as the latter was a Hongkonger who had not received permission to work in Singapore. Further, the charity's staff loan scheme had strict limits based on the employee's salary.

In an attempt to cover up the loan, the abbot and his aide recorded the $50,000 as a loan to the Mandala Buddhist Cultural Centre, a business entity owned by the charity. However, the Centre's books had no record of this. Later, false statements were made to the Commissioner of Charities when the loan was probed. This is another example where the cover-up offences turn a single act of dishonesty into a whole chain of offences.

Both have just been found guilty after a 21-day trial. Because this was not an isolated act of dishonesty and the fact that public monies in the form of charitable donations were misused, it is possible that a stiff sentence would be meted out. Sentencing will be on 11 November 2009.

[legal note - criminal breach of trust occurs when money entrusted with a person is used for unauthorised purposes. Even using such money for less than a day would amount to an offence under the Penal Code, and this is so even if the money is replaced]

2 Taiwanese jailed for credit card fraud

2 Taiwanese, Lin Ming-Hung and Huang Cheng-Yu, were jailed for 4 years each for counterfeit credit card offences involving more than $6,000. Although the amount involved is not large, the stiff sentence shows that the courts are determined to punish credit card fraud severely. They each pleaded guilty to 3 charges of having counterfeit cards, 2 charges of abetment to cheat and 11 other charges were taken into consideration.

The accused were part of a syndicate which trained them in fraud techniques such as which goods to purchase, and how to react if the retailer made a call to a bank to check the credit cards. It is understood that their detention was as a result of information provided by Card Security Group Singapore.

Past scandals - National Bank of Brunei (NBB)

This blog will cover not only Singapore cases but notable past cases that may be of interest to Singaporeans.

One case from Brunei concerns Khoo Teck Phuat and his son Khoo Ban Hock. The latter was managing director of NBB w. Under his charge, the bank loaned more than Brunei $1 billion (which is equivalent to Singapore $1 billion) to companies controlled by his father. These loans were undocumented and unsecured. It was claimed that these offences under Brunei banking laws by Khoo Ban Hock were committed under the control and his direction of his father.

When this dishonesty was discovered, the younger Khoo was sentenced to 3 years jail but later only served two. The elder Mr Khoo was not charged, but it was understood that he made restitution of about S$600 million to cover the losses suffered by various party. Mr Khoo Teck Puat later went on to become a billionaire, and was of the largest shareholders in megabank Standard Chartered when he died in 2004. However, after the NBB scandal, he kept a low profile.

Corruption and its effects

Besides strict penalties for the bribe payer and bribe taker, corruption can also lead to other effects.

For one, if an employee pays a bribe to the employee of a customer, the customer will be able to terminate the contract and also to sue the employee's company for any loss or damage.

As regards an employee bribe taker, besides losing his job, he is also subject to severe financial penalties. The employer can sue the employee for the value of any bribe received. This is on top of the penalty that can be imposed by a court which equals the value of the bribe received, under section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. This "double punishment" was confirmed by the court in a case involving Carrefour Supermarket -

see Carrefour Singapore v Leong Wai Kay, [2006] 4 SLR 412 (the last set of characters is the citation of the case which tells a lawyer where to find the decision in a law library)