Illegal transfers: Man cleared of money laundering

A man involved in "one of the most successful electronic bank heists" Singapore has seen was yesterday acquitted of three charges of money laundering by the High Court.

Ambrose Dionysius was cleared in the light of a recent Court of Appeal ruling regarding the law he was charged with breaking.

He was charged on three counts under Section 47(1) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act, or CDSA.

This provision, however, cannot apply to someone who launders the proceeds of another person's crime, the apex court ruled in a separate case in July.

The 62-year-old remains convicted of six other charges. His overall sentence of five years' jail was not affected, as the terms for the three charges were to run concurrently with the others.

Dionysius was sales director of a dormant Singapore firm, Hayashi Construction and Engineering, that received $4.4 million in stolen funds in 2013.

In July that year, employees at the RBC Royal Bank (Trinidad and Tobago) were duped into wiring a client's money, in two transactions, to Hayashi's bank account in Singapore.

The transfers were made after unidentified fraudsters sent e-mails to RBC from an Internet domain that was very similar to that of its client, the National Insurance Property Development Company (Nipdec).

Genuine e-mails from the client have the domain "nipdec.com", while the ones RBC received ended with "nipderc.com".

After receiving the first sum of $1.1 million, Dionysius withdrew $985,217 and passed this in cash to a Wendy Song in Malaysia.

A few days later, a second transfer of $3.3 million was made, but the Commercial Affairs Department moved in before this could be withdrawn.

In 2017, Dionysius was found guilty on four counts of receiving stolen property, three counts of money laundering for moving the money from Singapore to Malaysia, and two counts of failing to report the movements of cash amounts above the declarable value.

He appealed against his conviction and sentence.

At his appeal yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Leong Weng Tat conceded that the three money-laundering charges "can no longer be sustained".

In July, the Court of Appeal ruled that someone who launders the proceeds of another person's crime cannot be charged under Section 47(1) of the CDSA, but under Section 47(2) instead.

The ruling came in the case of Osborn Yap, who received US$420,000 from a bank account in Bermuda in May 2013. The apex court did not convict Yap under Section 47(2) because the prosecution failed to prove that a crime had been committed overseas.