The suspected ringleader, a 48-year-old businessman, was among 17 people arrested in an islandwide operation by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) yesterday.

Investigations are going on into whether the suspected ringleader, the director of a logistics company, used his firm as a front for loan-sharking.

The other 16 suspects, who include three married couples, are said to be from different rungs of the syndicate and include its runners.

They were rounded up in a nine-hour dragnet which began at midnight yesterday. Forty officers from CID and the Police Intelligence Department fanned out to 15 locations, many of which were in the east.

None of them put up a struggle when the police came knocking at their homes.

Aged between 32 and 60, all are Singaporean, except for a Thai permanent resident. Most had criminal records, some for illegal moneylending activities as well, although the suspected ringleader was 'clean'.

CID director Ng Boon Gay said he believed the syndicate has been wiped out.

From the homes and offices of those arrested, police seized eight computers, two fax machines, 29 mobile phones, ATM cards, bank passbooks and more than $200,000, including $6,000 in the suspected ringleader's possession.

The syndicate had been in operation for about two years, said Assistant Commissioner Ng. The CID, acting on intelligence gathered, stepped up its efforts to cripple it in the last two months.

The syndicate had more than 500 debtors who had borrowed between $500 and $2,000. Repayments were due every week.

AC Ng said the police were investigating whether the syndicate had links to secret societies here, having already found out that it had none with moneylending syndicates overseas.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Wong Choong Mann, the CID's assistant director for specialised crime, said most loan-shark syndicates had no foreign links, and that the situation here was 'very much under control'.

The last time a major loan-shark syndicate was crippled here was about a year ago, when 17 men were arrested and $130,000 seized in a similar islandwide operation.

Harassment and unlicensed moneylending cases last year numbered 9,762, down from 10,221 the year before, following stiffer penalties put in place in 2006.

carolynq@sph.com.sg