Only woman in $3 billion money laundering case jailed 15 months

SINGAPORE - Chinese national Lin Baoying, the only woman to be charged in Singapore’s largest money laundering case, was sentenced to 15 months’ jail on May 30.

Lin, 44,

faced 10 charges

and pleaded guilty to three. They comprised two charges of submitting a forged document to a bank and one money laundering charge.

Seven other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

Of the 10 foreigners arrested in August 2023 following

islandwide raids at luxury homes here led by the Commercial Affairs Department,

Lin, who has passports from Turkey, Cambodia and Dominica, is the eighth person to be sentenced.

She had more than $170.5 million in assets that included cash, vehicles, properties and cryptocurrency seized after her arrest. About 90 per cent – or $153 million – will be forfeited to the state.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Gan Ee Kiat said Lin had submitted forged documents to two banks to explain the sources of multimillion-dollar deposits made in 2020.

Lin said the deposits were to buy property and make investments in Singapore. She was here on an Employment Pass at the time and did not have verifiable sources of income.

Between Aug 24 and Oct 23 in 2020, several deposits totalling more than HK$122 million (S$21 million) were made to her CIMB account by Leosen Trade, a Hong Kong company.

When the bank asked her to explain the source of the funds, she submitted a forged document showing she had sold a property in Macau.

Lin submitted another forged document to UOB Kay Hian to explain a deposit of HK$7.5 million that was made to her securities trading account by Beiyin, another Hong Kong company, on Aug 11, 2020.

In both instances, DPP Gan said Lin had instructed her assistant to obtain fake documents to satisfy the banks’ queries as she could not explain the source of her funds.

The HK$7.5 million in her UOB Kay Hian account was the subject of Lin’s money laundering charge, which was proceeded with for sentencing.

She admitted that the money was not from the sale of a Macau property, but rather from an unregistered gambling operation overseas that she ran from 2015 to 2019.

DPP Gan said the police have reasons to suspect that her involvement in the gambling operation was illegal, and her funds were the benefits of criminal conduct.

He asked the court to sentence Lin to between 15 and 17 months’ jail, saying she used intermediaries and forged documents to avoid scrutiny from financial institutions in Singapore.

DPP Gan said such sophisticated means made the offences difficult to detect and investigate, and that deterrence is needed so that such offences do not become more prevalent.

He added that while the offences did not cause immediate financial loss, there was cost incurred from the investigations carried out by the banks and the police.

He said the banks’ reputations were also negatively affected by this episode.

Lin was represented by a team of lawyers including Mr Chew Kei-Jin. 

He asked the court to sentence Lin to not more than 13 months’ jail, citing the sentences meted out to other offenders in the case.

Addressing the point on the cost to the financial institutions, Mr Chew said the banks are supposed to do their checks, and they did not carry them out particularly for this case.

He added that Lin is a single mother of two children, and had come to Singapore to build a life for them.

On how the case had impacted her daughter, the lawyer said: “She has stopped attending school and that is something which is a direct result of what is happening to her mother.”

DPP Gan said that, out of the eight who have pleaded guilty, only the amount laundered by Zhang Ruijin is comparable to Lin’s case, and that the respective sums involving the other offenders are substantially lower.

It was revealed in earlier court proceedings that

Lin and Zhang were lovers

and have known each other for more than a decade.

Lin calls Zhang her husband, though they are not officially married.

But in Zhang’s first court appearance the day after his arrest, he referred to Lin and said: “You can separate her crimes from me, we are just lovers... You can bail me out, but remand her.”

Following Lin’s case, more than $713 million in assets have been forfeited by the eight foreigners convicted so far.

Su Wenqiang, Su Haijin, Su Baolin, Wang Baosen, Vang Shuiming, Zhang Ruijin and Chen Qingyuan were sentenced to between 13 and 15 months’ jail each.

Su Wenqiang and Wang Baosen were

deported to Cambodia

on May 6 after serving about 8½ months of their 13-month jail term.

The remaining two plan to plead guilty next week.

Su Jianfeng is set to plead guilty on June 6, while Wang Dehai intends to do so on June 7.