From the ST archives: State to seize $23m of tycoon’s assets

This article was first published in The Straits print edition on Sept 22, 2011.

A rogue tycoon who fled Singapore six years ago is to have about $23 million of his assets seized by the State.

Ng Teck Lee will lose shares, proceeds from property sales and the contents of several bank and insurance accounts, after the High Court yesterday issued what is believed to be the largest confiscation order in recent times.

Investigators spent several years tracing his assets after he skipped town following one of Singapore’s biggest corporate scandals.

Ng carried out the US$51 million (S$65 million) fraud in 2003 and 2004 while he was president of recycling firm Citiraya Industries.

When his clients gave him 62 shipments of used computer chips to dispose of, he repackaged them and sold them to buyers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is now on Interpol’s wanted list and his whereabouts are unknown.

The Public Prosecutor wanted to convince the court that about $28 million of the tycoon’s assets should be seized.But Justice Kan Ting Chiu decided that about $4 million should be set aside due to competing claims by the recycling firm that replaced Citiraya, a Malaysian businessman, and Ng’s brother-in-law. All three said that they were entitled to some of Ng’s assets.

Lawyers for the new recycling company, Centillion, successfully argued that it should receive about $1.69 million in his accounts.

The Malaysian businessman, Mr Ung Yoke Hooi, also succeeded in preventing the Public Prosecutor from seizing about $700,000.

He had been given the money by Ng in exchange for shares in a technology firm. It was frozen by the prosecution after the tycoon fled the country, but Mr Ung claimed he should be allowed to keep it.

Justice Kan ruled that the question of who was entitled to the money should be decided at a separate hearing.

Ng’s wife will also hold on to her share of the family’s home after the judge ruled that it had not been bought with the proceeds of crime.

Madam Thor Chwee Hwa – who is believed to have left the country shortly after her husband – owns 60 per cent of the $3 million house in Paya Lebar Crescent.

The rest is owned by Ng’s brother-in-law Thor Beng Huat. He argued that he should be entitled to her share, but the court disagreed.

Justice Kan ordered that a receiver be appointed to liquidate Ng’s assets, which were approved for seizure under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act.

Ng is not the only criminal who has been stripped of millions of dollars by the State. In 2000, Singapore Airlines clerk Teo Cheng Kiat had assets worth about $22 million seized after he was handed a 24-year jail sentence for stealing around $35 million from his employer over several years.