Firm charged with providing unlawful payment services after its bank accounts allegedly received $104m
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The money, allegedly received between January 2020 and September 2022, was slated to be sent to other overseas bank accounts, the police said.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
SINGAPORE - A local company has been accused of providing unlawful payment services after its bank accounts allegedly received over US$80.9 million (S$104 million) from payers who were mainly based overseas.
The money, allegedly received between January 2020 and September 2022, was slated to be sent to other overseas bank accounts, the police said.
On Jan 22, the company, Singapore Precious Metals Exchange (SPME), which deals with metals and metal ores, was charged with providing payment services without a licence.
One of its directors, Victor Foo Seang Kwang, 55, also received a similar charge. Foo, a Malaysian who is a Singapore permanent resident, is accused of allowing the company to provide such services.
“Such unlicensed services may be used to facilitate illicit cross-border financial activities such as money laundering,” the police had said in a statement on Jan 21.
The police also said that SPME operates an exchange platform for individuals and institutions to buy, store and trade precious metals in Singapore. The platform also facilitates peer-to-peer trading of gold bars.
Investigations revealed that SPME had allegedly provided cross-border payment services to a group of its customers – the “payer entities” – without a licence, said the police.
The agency’s spokesperson added: “In connection with this, SPME had allegedly received monies in its bank accounts from the payer entities, which were intended to be transmitted to other customers – the ‘payee entities’.
“It had also allegedly received instructions from (both) entities to execute transactions relating to the purchase and sale of gold bars, which are suspected to have served as a justification for the flow of these monies.”
The pre-trial conferences for the cases involving Foo and SPME will be held on March 2.
If convicted of allowing a company to provide payment services without a licence, an individual can be jailed for up to three years, fined up to $125,000, or both.
A company convicted of providing such services without a licence can be fined up to $250,000.
