11 Comments

How many would be whistleblowers in Singapore are being intimidated, coerced or enticed into silence to keep Singapore looking clean? How many more Lee Hsien Yang's will find themselves in exile because they speak truth to power? How many more journalists or activists will be sued? How many more Parti Liyani's will be prosecuted on perjured evidence because they happen to cross a powerful elite? How many businessmen will be threatened, and innocent families financially destroyed because another well-connected Singapore elite believes that the establishment will protect them?

https://www.bankingonthetruth.com/post/is-the-singapore-establishment-a-bastion-of-integrity-or-a-master-illusionist

Expand full comment

So much for a "clean" and incorruptible" Singapore? Only [more] questions to be asked. Just how "clean" is Singapore, how competent is the PAP dictatorship of the Singapore "government", and how much more dirty money has filtered through Singapore's so-called Switzerland of the East cash machines aka banks and related financial institutions? Who was in cahoots with whom? How much aiding and betting by well-positioned Singapore nationals has managed to blindside MAS, just as MAS was easily blindsided by Malaysia's Najib Razak and his crooks over the siphoning of 1MDB funds? You can clean up chewing gum in Singapore but high-level scandals and corruption in Singapore are conveniently allowed. In the very Orwellian Survelillance State of Singapore, how was all this money-laundering missed that these corrupt Chinese were allowed to buy some of the most expensive properties and luxury items? On the latter, were Singapore Customs asleep on the job? On the former, how did the PAP dictatorship and its bureaucracy not know who was buying which property at what eye-watering prices? Something that smells worse than belacan stinks in Singapore -- and of the PAP dictatorship. Maybe even long-time dead dogs.

Expand full comment

Now that this drama has unfolded and the crooks exposed, don't forget part 2 of it.

Investigate who has turned a blind eye for so long!

I'm pretty sure alarm bells were ringing but someone was muting it for the most time. And as sure as snakes shed their skin, whoever putting the blanket over this fiasco has to hold some relative position.

Expand full comment

Already happening. News just reported that 60 property agents in SG have been called up for investigations linked to this scandal. The dragnet is widening. This is an unprecedented failure of the AML regime in SG not seen since 1MDB.

Expand full comment

Australia has long been a favourite destination for stolen mainland Chinese money. The government of the commonwealth of Australia is happy to turn a blind eye to suspect money that comes into Australia but not the other way round.

Much of this money comes in cash and through hot money destinations like those mentioned in this article. Most jurisdictions of convenience and secrecy (especially those that are part of the United Kingdon like the Cayman islands and the British Virgin islands) pay lip service to anti money laundering legislation.

Hundreds of millions in Chinese flight money, most of it black, has been invested in over priced real estate in Australia pushing many local Australians out of the residential housing market. Many of these purchases remain unoccupied and empty, others accommodating up to 35 students in 3 bedroom apartments and houses from within the Chinese communities, mainly students in make shift bunks to produce an abovee average return on investment.

Singapore has long been a conduit forr such money. They've adopted the policy of dont ask don't tell as for as far as large amounts of cash coming in to the country. Lo Hsin Han was one such customer of Singapore's black money laundry. Lo was Myanmar's lord of the Golden Triangle.

Many observers of this phenomenon which has escalated in recent years believe this to be part of a wider strategy by the government of mainland China to breed social unrest in places like Australia where homelessness and foreign purchases of residential properties are being carried out stealthily by estate agents, bankers, lawyers and accountants acting as undisclosed trustees of Chinese from abroad in breach of foreign investment laws. Payback time apparently.

Expand full comment

Australia doesn't put itself on a pedestal as an example that all others should follow for its 'clean' systems of Governance. Australian Ministers are not the highest paid in the World to keep them incorruptible. It's the SG leadership that proclaims a zero tolerance to corruption, no cover-ups are allowed and no-one is above the law, whilst the PM's family members are driven into exile because they called out an abuse of power in the highest echelons.

PAP put themselves on that pedestal!

Expand full comment
Aug 18, 2023·edited Aug 18, 2023

So why don't you ask these questions of your famous PAP dictatorship that the city-state has been a conduit for dirty money by its Lee Kuan Yew idolized China? And who in China has allowed this criminal activity to fester if it has links within the CCP regime and its elite party cadres?

I, for one, have not seen "social unrest" in Australia over Chinese acquisitions of Australian properties. Nor for that matter of Chinese money buying Australian agriculture. There wasn't even one when the Arabs were buying up cattle ranches. Or earlier the Japanese, and the Americans. All of these were investments but money-laundering Chinese criminals, who are a dime a dozen -- even in Singapore or Malaysia, Thailand or Cambodia -- have always been "watched" closely enough by Australian intelligence and the Australian Federal Police. And not a single Australian or resident of Australia took the streets to protest against the federal government, nor indeed the "homeless" had raised heckles other than condemn successive governments over their piss-weak (social) housing policy. Seems to me Gopal Raj Kumar is is playing fiddles with facts -- again.

Expand full comment

Almost as if SG had learnt nothing after the 1MDB scandal which also involved SG-based banks and bankers, some of whom went to prison as a result. KYC/AML protocols are only as good as the individuals doing them. I wonder how many were treating it as a rubber-stamping procedure instead of actual due diligence?

Expand full comment

Great work Singapore and China alongside all involved parties. Leaps and bounds ahead and seeking the example needed at this time. ❤️🙏🏾👏🏾👌🏾👌🏾

Expand full comment

The question remains: who was Najib’s accomplices and partners involved with 1MDB?

Expand full comment

Do you mean who within Singapore were in cahoots with Najib Razak, the criminal? If that's what you mean, then yes, I agree. Why has the Monetary Authority of Singapore been as quest as a temple mouse?

Expand full comment