Warrant of arrest for Charles Yeo extended; disbarred lawyer fled S’pore in 2022 while out on bail

SINGAPORE -  The District Court on April 2 granted an extension of an arrest warrant issued against Singaporean fugitive Charles Yeo Yao Hui, who was a lawyer until he was disbarred in 2025 over disciplinary issues.

Yeo, who fled Singapore in 2022 while out on bail, faces eight charges in total.

Three harassment charges and three counts of wounding the religious feeling of Christians were filed in 2022.

According to the Singapore Courts’ integrated case management system (ICMS), new charges were filed against Yeo on April 2.

However, the Attorney-General’s Chambers clarified that a charge of cheating and one charge of absconding were in fact tendered in 2023.

Yeo had absconded in July 2022 while out on bail over allegations of criminal breach of trust and forgery.

He claimed at the time that he needed to travel to Vietnam to meet a witness linked to an unrelated case that he was handling at the time.

However, later the same month he declared on Instagram that he was seeking political asylum in Britain.

A warrant of arrest was issued in Singapore in August 2022 and the full bail amount of $15,000, with his mother acting as bailor, was forfeited the next month.

Following a request in October 2023 by Singapore for his extradition over an abetment of cheating allegation, Yeo was arrested in Britain on Nov 4, 2024.

He is awaiting an extradition hearing there.

Meanwhile, another warrant of arrest review hearing for Yeo in Singapore has been fixed for Oct 1.

Struck off

Yeo, who was chairman of the Reform Party, was struck off the rolls on Nov 28, 2025, after the Law Society of Singapore brought five sets of disciplinary proceedings against him.

Three of the complaints were lodged by migrant workers after settlement for their workplace injuries were disbursed to a third party instead of to the workers as a result of Yeo’s due diligence failures.

The fourth complaint involved at least 185 breaches of rules governing how lawyers handle money, arising out of Yeo’s mismanagement of clients’ funds and financial records.

The final charge related to misrepresentations he had made to the court while he was representing two death row inmates, as well as Instagram posts attacking the legal system.

The Court of Three Judges said Yeo, who was admitted to the Bar in August 2016, had shown himself to be “thoroughly unfit” in discharging his duties as a lawyer.

The extent of his breaches, including both the quantity of the complaints and quality of his misconduct, signified his “serious defects of character”, the court added in a written statement.