Jail and fine for man who ran illegal remittance service at Peninsula Plaza
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U Sun Tint was the registered director of M/S Leo International Trading. It operated as a shopfront at Peninsula Plaza.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
SINGAPORE - From a unit at Peninsula Plaza, the director of a trading company collected close to $30 million over three years from people looking to send money to Myanmar.
On Thursday, Sun Tint, 66, was sentenced to six months’ jail and given a fine of $100,000 after he pleaded guilty to providing an unlicensed payment service.
A charge for carrying out a remittance business without a licence was taken into consideration during sentencing.
According to court documents, Sun Tint, a Singaporean, was the registered director of M/S Leo International Trading that was in the business of import and export of beer and seafood products.
His wife, Thiri Naing, a Myanmar national and Singapore permanent resident, was the manager of the company, which operated a shopfront at Peninsula Plaza. She was said to have acted under her husband’s instructions.
Some time in 2017, Sun Tint was approached by various Myanmar nationals working in Singapore, including friends and foreign domestic workers, who needed assistance to remit money home.
While he initially assisted some of them as a favour, he later decided to offer remittance services from July 2017 and developed a business model to offer such services through Leo International.
An individual seeking to remit money would approach either Sun Tint or his wife at Leo International and hand over cash in Singapore dollars.
The couple would then convert the sum to its equivalent value in Myanmar kyat based on the exchange rate set by Sun Tint.
There was also a service fee depending on the remittance amount.
He would then sell the cash to business people who approached Leo International to purchase cash in Singapore dollars. These business people were typically Myanmar nationals seeking to purchase cash for their own needs.
Before handing over the cash, Sun Tint or his wife would direct the business person to transfer an amount in kyat, based on a rate published online by DBS Singapore, to a Myanmar-based bank account.
The account was operated by Sun Tint’s distant cousin, who was based in Yangon and employed to assist in the cross-border money transfer service.
At the end of the day, Sun Tint or his wife would direct his cousin to transfer various amounts in kyat to the bank accounts provided by their remittance customers.
Between July 30, 2017, and June 28, 2020, Sun Tint collected about $29.9 million and transferred about 31.9 billion in kyat to persons in Myanmar.
He estimated that he earned $87,200.64 from service charges. He also estimated that he made a profit of $30,422.11 from selling the cash in Singapore dollars to the business persons, given the differences in exchange rates.
On June 28, 2020, a police operation at Peninsula Plaza to combat illegal remittance activities found Leo International to be conducting a remittance business without a valid licence.
Four Myanmar nationals admitted to police that they were engaging Sun Tint or his wife to either use the remittance services provided by Leo International or make inquiries about the rates charged for the remittance services.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jordon Li asked the court to sentence Sun Tint to at least six months’ jail and a fine of $100,000.
The prosecutor said the case involved a staggeringly large sum and was an egregious breach of the licensing regime, which Sun Tint knew fully well as he had made inquiries.
The prosecutor added that such offences threaten the integrity and reputation of Singapore’s financial banking system, as payment services may be easily used for money laundering and terrorism financing due to the anonymous and borderless nature of the transactions.
On Thursday, Thiri Naing, who was charged with a similar offence as her husband, was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal. DPP Li told the court that a conditional warning will be meted out to her.
For carrying out a business of providing a type of payment service in Singapore without a licence, Sun Tint could have been fined up to $125,000, jailed for up to three years, or both.