Not long ago, the Singapore police seized a huge money laundering case involving an amount of up to S$3.89 million (about 20.75 million yuan)...
The investigation found that all the companies involved in the case were registered by foreigners to a local service company in Singapore, and all the senior executives of the company were foreigners, except for a local Singaporean director named Tham Li Ling.
Subsequently, the police investigated the information of Ms. Tham in depth and believed that she had a great background...
According to the data, 45-year-old Ms. Tham has served as a director of 127 companies, and is currently a director of 84 companies, a shareholder of four companies, and a secretary of a company, and the company handling and traceable stolen money as a director is as high as S$5 million (about 26.6704 million yuan), so she is listed as an important suspect in the money laundering case.
But strangely, before 2016, Ms. Tham had basically no serious work experience, and her education had not yet graduated from high school, and her career development was a leap forward...
After the police came to the door, they found out that the director of Tham was actually a part-time cleaning lady...
(Schematic diagram)
Ms. Tham has no management training, no experience in managing companies or employees, knows nothing about money laundering cases, and is a director who is purely entrusted to make some extra money...
Due to her family's poverty, Ms. Tham dropped out of school to work in the third year of secondary school, and without a diploma, her job search was naturally hindered everywhere, so she did not find a stable job in her 30s, and had to work as a manual handyman.
One day in 2015, she was contacted by a Singapore-based corporate service provider called "JJ&E". "JJ&E" serves foreign customers and registers companies in Singapore for them, but according to the Companies Act, every Singapore company registered by foreign customers must have at least one local resident director, so they hope that Ms. Tham can be the local director of JJ&E registered company, and promise to pay her.
(Singapore Company Incorporation Services)
Since 2016, Ms. Tham has gone from being a cleaning lady who didn't graduate from high school to a director of several companies... As of April 12, 2018, she is already a director of 127 companies, and has previously served as a director of another 14 companies, each of which will give her S$2,000 (about 10,669 yuan) a year, which is her nominal payment.
According to Ms. Tham, she did not conduct any investigations into these companies before and during her tenure, nor did she have any detailed information about the foreign directors, nor even what business the company operated, let alone meet them...
In terms of the company's finances, she has not looked at the company's accounts and bank accounts, and the documents and checkbooks in her hands are sent directly to foreign customers.
Ms. Tham was happy to make money in this way, completely unaware of the dangers of this practice...
According to court documents, between December 2017 and February 2018, Ms. Tham worked as a local director of three companies incorporated by JJ&E, which carried out a number of business email breach scams, and received a total of about S$3.89 million (about 20.75 million yuan) in bank accounts, all of which were fraudulent...
(Schematic diagram)
Once the company was incorporated, Ms. Tham relinquished control of all local bank accounts and did not have access to the account facilities or bank statements of the companies, which were controlled by the foreign directors of the companies.
But after the incident, Ms. Tham, as the local director of the company, was naturally implicated in the fraud and was taken to court, even though she had no idea who she was and what she was doing...
In addition to being charged with three counts of violations under the Companies Act, Ms. Tham is also accused of failing to perform her duties and failing to exercise her duty of supervision and due diligence while serving as a director of three companies, causing the three companies to exploit loopholes and obtain illegal proceeds from foreign victims of fraud.
During the trial, Ms. Tham desperately pleaded with the judge, saying that she had done nothing from start to finish, that she had no knowledge of the fraud, and that she had resigned immediately after discovering that there was a problem with the company.
In the end, the judge gave Ms. Tham a 16-day prison sentence and a five-year ban from serving as a director of the company.
(Result of the trial)
It can only be said that there is no such thing as a free lunch in the world...