Two years' jail for former bank employee implicated in saga

The bank employee whose role in a forgery case in 2021 contributed to the largest money laundering probe in Singapore was sentenced on Oct 23 to two years’ jail.

- Claudia Tan

Wang Qiming, 28, had pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery, one count of money laundering and one for the obstruction of justice.

The Chinese national had forged documents to conceal the source of funds belonging to Cambodian national Su Baolin, who was one of the 10 foreigners arrested in 2023 in the $3 billion money laundering probe.

Six other charges, including for forging a document to allow money launderer Vang Shuiming to deposit $1 million into Vang’s Citibank account, were taken into consideration for sentencing.

Wang’s lawyer, Mr Vinit Chhabra from Vinit Chhabra Law Corporation, had argued for seven to 11 months’ jail, saying that it was disproportionate for his client’s sentence to be longer than that of the convicted money launderers.

The 10 foreigners were jailed for between 13 and 17 months in 2024.

Although Wang was not named earlier, the Government had revealed that the money laundering probe was sparked by suspicious activities detected in 2021, specifically the use of forged documents to back up the source of funds in bank accounts.

Financial institutions subsequently filed reports of suspicious transactions, leading to the start of separate police investigations in early 2022.

Wang, who was employed as a relationship manager at Citibank, had clients that included three of the 10 foreign nationals implicated in the case — Vang, Su Haijin and Su Baolin.

Court documents showed that Wang started working with Su Baolin in December 2020 when the Cambodian national wanted to open a bank account with Citibank.

The bank employee eventually became his relationship manager in January 2021.

On Dec 8, 2020, Wang helped Su Baolin arrange the sale of 1,499,980 units of cryptocurrency USDT in exchange for Singapore dollars through a third-party sales agent.

This was a private arrangement between Su Baolin and Wang, and was not done through Citibank’s platforms.