9 months' jail for man in case where a firm was allegedly duped of $9.7m

SINGAPORE - A man has pleaded guilty to his role in a cheating case linked to a construction firm that was allegedly duped of about $9.7 million in total.

In an earlier statement, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) said that between March and August 2016, a group of men from the firm, Civil Tech (CTPL), allegedly used subcontractors to submit claims to the company for works that had not been carried out.

Wong Mun Kin, now 53, who was one of the subcontractors, was on Friday (March 25) sentenced to nine months' jail after he pleaded guilty to five counts of forgery.

He had issued multiple false invoices for more than $1.2 million and kept for himself about $43,000 from the scheme.

At the time the offences were committed, he was a director at Rui Feng Engineering and Construction, and the sole owner of Alliance Resources Engineering and Construction.

The Singaporean is the first person linked to the case to be dealt with in court.

The cases involving 11 others, who were then between 34 and 59 years old, are still pending.

At the time, four of them - Ong Kok Peng, Gan Kok Leong, Tan Chen Chuan and Liauw Lee Meng - were working for CTPL.

A fifth man, Bong Saik King, was then a director at general contractor Global Civil Engineering (GCE).

The court heard that these five men had been code-named "wolf of five".

The six remaining subcontractors allegedly involved are: Huang Zhiguo, Tan Heng Lee, Seow Yam Seng, Zhuang He, Ang Lye Soon and Yu Yingjie.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Sean Teh said that in 2016, the "wolf of five" entered a conspiracy to cheat CTPL.

He told the court: "It was agreed...that Bong would issue false invoices to CTPL through GCE to support the claim that work had been carried out as specified in the false invoices, when no such work had been carried out.

"Monies would then be transferred out of CTPL pursuant to these false invoices."

The prosecutor added that it was also agreed among the "wolf of five" that the dishonestly obtained monies would be withdrawn from GCE through the use of subcontractors.

These subcontractors would issue false invoices to GCE, and GCE would then transfer monies to the subcontractors based on the false invoices.

After that, the subcontractors would withdraw the monies in cash and hand them to the "wolf of five".

In return, the subcontractors would get to keep a percentage of the transferred monies.

The "wolf of five" are alleged to have cheated CTPL of about $9.7 million in all.

According to court documents, Wong was a director at Rui Feng when he met some members of the "wolf of five" in early 2016 and was informed of the ruse.

Wong then informed Seow, who was the owner of Rui Feng, about the plan.

The DPP said: "Seow eventually agreed to issue false invoices to GCE. Seow and Wong agreed to open a new company for this sole purpose.

"Therefore, on March 31, 2016, Wong registered Alliance Resources as a new company... set up purely for the purposes of facilitating the scheme of withdrawing monies from GCE through false invoices."

As part of the ruse, Wong later issued multiple false invoices for more than $1.2 million.

In 2017, the CPIB received an anonymous complaint about the ruse, and all 12 men were later hauled to court last September.

For each count of forgery, an offender can be jailed for up to four years and fined.