HK woman jailed for 10 years for laundering $1.09b

HONG KONG (REUTERS) - A Hong Kong public housing tenant was jailed for 10 years on Tuesday for laundering more than HK$6.8 billion (S$1.09 billion) through nine banks, just two months after a Chinese man was imprisoned in the Asian financial centre's biggest such case.

Lam Mei Ling, 61, laundered the money between 2002 and 2005 with about 39,500 bank transfers, the Court of First Instance heard.

The defendant said she made the transfers on behalf of an unidentified woman, from her home town in Dongguan in southern China's Guangdong province near Hong Kong, who used to babysit her daughter before becoming a factory owner.

Lam, who pleaded not guilty, had testified that she was illiterate and had been told to transfer the money to other mainland factory owners.