2024 Wrapped: The Biggest Crime Stories of the Year, and What's Next for the Cases

High-profile corruption hearings, including one involving a former Cabinet minister and his billionaire friend, a surge in murder cases and record sums lost to scammers.

- Nadine Chua

These were among the stories that hogged the headlines in 2024.

1 CORRUPTION CASES

Singapore's graft busters, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), had a number of major cases.

They included one involving S. Iswaran, who was handed a 12-month jail term on Oct 3 after pleading guilty to obtaining valuable items as a public servant.

The former transport minister's case is tied to that of property developer Ong Beng Seng, the chairman of Formula One (F1) race promoter Singapore GP.

Ong was charged on Oct 4 with abetting a public servant in obtaining gifts and with abetting the obstruction of justice.

Section 165 makes it an offence for a public servant to accept or obtain anything of value, for free or for inadequate payment, from anyone with whom he is involved in an official capacity.

Iswaran was the first to be prosecuted under Section 165 of the Penal Code in post-independent Singapore.

In December, CPIB announced the arrest of a rogue Singaporean tycoon and his wife who ran from the law 19 years ago over embezzlement allegations.

Ng Teck Lee, 58, was the chief executive and president of then listed recycling company Citiraya Industries, which was in the business of recycling and recovering precious metals from electronic scrap, such as used computer chips. Its clients included semiconductor giants like AMD, Intel and Infineon.

Instead of crushing items to recover precious metals from the scrap, Ng allegedly sent the products overseas to be sold.

He purportedly made more than US$51 million, which was worth around $72 million at the time, from his schemes.

Ng allegedly bribed several people in his scheme. For their roles in the crimes, 12 people were sentenced to between eight months and eight years in jail.

2 FINANCIAL CRIMES