ZHANG Ruijin, one of the 10 individuals embroiled in Singapore’s largest money laundering case, has been sentenced to 15 months’ jail, the longest term handed in this case thus far.
The Chinese national on Tuesday (Apr 30) pleaded guilty to three charges of money laundering and forgery. Five other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Around S$131 million of Zhang’s assets had been seized by the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) or issued prohibition of disposal orders, which means that they cannot be sold. He has agreed to forfeit 90 per cent of this amount.
The sentence will be backdated to Aug 15, 2023, when Zhang was arrested in an islandwide bust.
He is represented by two teams – lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam and his eponymous law firm, as well as a team from RS Solomon.
Days before his guilty plea, Zhang was handed five new charges, bringing the total number of charges to eight.
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He was charged with receiving HK$56.9 million (S$9.9 million) in his Standard Chartered Bank Singapore (StanChart) account, which is believed to be, in part or in whole, benefits of criminal conduct.
He is also accused of forging a document that was submitted to StanChart to support the HK$56.9 million sum.
Other charge sheets noted he had possessed a total of HK$151.3 million in a CIMB Bank account that was suspected to benefit from criminal conduct.
Other charges he received were related to forging the documents used to cheat CIMB Bank.
Zhang was arrested on Aug 15, 2023. His lover, Lin Baoying, was also arrested in the islandwide anti-money laundering operation and is in remand.
She faces three charges in relation to the ongoing money laundering case – two for forging documents to cheat CIMB Bank and OCBC, as well as one for intentionally perverting the course of justice by falsely telling a CAD officer that her assistant had prepared one of the forged documents.
More than S$3 billion in assets have been seized or frozen in relation to Singapore’s largest money laundering case.
Besides Zhang and Lin, four have been sentenced to between 13 and 14 months’ jail, while one more is expected to plead guilty.
The remaining three are in remand.
