Inside the S$3b money laundering case and the undoing of Wang Shuiming’s crime empire

SINGAPORE: It was the morning when the police blew open Singapore’s biggest money laundering case. As they swooped on a Good Class Bungalow in the Tanglin area, a rags-to-riches life of crime was about to come to an end.

Inside that bungalow along Bishopsgate — whose monthly rent was S$150,000 (US$117,000) — was Chinese-born Wang Shuiming, who would become a key figure in the case.

His capture on Aug 15, 2023, was part of a coordinated raid on luxury homes across Singapore, involving more than 400 officers.

The scale of the operation and assets to be seized were such that investigation officers at the briefing the day before “were all shocked”, recalled Teh Yee Liang, a former team leader in the Singapore Police Force’s Commercial Affairs Department.

“It’s unprecedented.”

Ten suspects were arrested. The investigation later widened to 17 other suspects who fled Singapore, with S$3 billion in assets seized or frozen in total.

And among those arrested, Wang — also known as Vang Shuiming — had the most assets seized, amounting to about S$199 million held by him, his wife and their companies.

How did a boy raised in poverty become so wealthy, living a lavish lifestyle in Singapore, only for most of his ill-gotten gains to be disgorged?

That question drives The Billion Dollar Wash, CNA’s second micro-factual series following last year’s Merger To Separation.

Three years in the making, the 25-part series traces Wang’s story from China to the Philippines to Cambodia to Singapore through CNA’s interviews with former neighbours, officials and experts. Each episode runs for about 1.5 minutes to over two minutes.

Teh’s firsthand account of the investigation into Wang also takes CNA inside two years of covert police work, what unfolded during the raids and months of questioning.

WATCH PART 1: Inside Singapore’s biggest money laundering scandal (1:18)

FROM MUD WALLS TO MULTIMILLION-YUAN BETS

Born in 1981, Wang grew up in Anxi, one of Fujian province’s poorest counties then. Even there, his family stood out for their abject situation.

Neighbours recalled them living in a mud-walled shack and his parents scraping a living by selling rice. Relatives sometimes brought them food out of pity.

“They were extremely impoverished,” said a villager identified only as Li. “Everyone felt sorry for his poor family.”

As Anxi’s tea industry boomed in the 1990s, Wang allegedly cashed in by swindling buyers of tea-processing equipment. “Once you transfer the payment, (Wang) will block your number,” Li said.

By the early 2000s, Wang had become a bookmaker in Xiamen, running illegal betting pools based on Hong Kong’s Mark Six lottery.

While Mark Six was legal in Hong Kong, mainland bookies had no connection to the lottery’s operator, the Hong Kong Jockey Club. They simply used its winning numbers, said Wu Qingshu, an associate professor at Huaqiao University’s law school.

Another of Wang’s former neighbours, “Zheng”, recalled: “In one night, bets could reach several hundred million yuan.”

By the 2010s, Wang was running a loan guarantee company in Xiamen, which operated like an unlicensed moneylender charging high interest. But his fortunes took a hit, according to Zheng, when a borrower vanished with more than 20 million yuan (US$3 million).

Chinese authorities were also stepping up raids on underground gambling operations. Disillusioned and fearing arrest, Wang abandoned the business and looked overseas.

A GAMBLING EMPIRE ACROSS BORDERS

Around 2012 or 2013, Wang headed to the Philippines, where he could reach gamblers in China without them leaving home. His operation, the Heng Bo Bao Wang group, livestreamed casino games and handled thousands of bets an hour.

By 2016, he had recruited underground gambling operators from Fujian and reportedly launched several linked platforms.

The Philippine offshore gambling industry was booming, attracting criminal syndicates and investments worth “not just millions but billions”, said Police Lieutenant Colonel Michelle Olaivar, media affairs officer for the Philippines’ Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission.

According to one Chinese report, Wang’s operations had a monthly turnover of about US$687 million.

“No matter how you gamble, you’re bound to lose,” said Wu, highlighting that some online gambling operators rigged their systems to control wins and losses.

Operating from the Philippines did not shield Wang from Chinese law against taking online bets from mainland customers. Nor did it solve another problem: how to spend his fortune without exposing its illicit origins.

WATCH PART 8: Billions in dirty money. How do you make it look clean? (2:00)

“People will ask, well, where did this money come from?” National University of Singapore law professor Kumaralingam Amirthalingam noted. “So you need to, as it were, ‘clean’ that money.”

Koh Sinyee, the director of compliance consultancy firm Integrity Consulting, outlined three stages: placement — putting illicit funds into a financial system; layering — disguising their origins through transactions; and integration — using them to buy assets or invest.

To make illicit funds appear legitimate, criminals use the same banks, companies and financial systems as lawful businesses, said Bruno Vickers, an investigations and risk expert at global consulting firm HKA.

The more countries and the more structures you can move your money through, the harder it is to detect the dirty money.

ONE MAN, FOUR PASSPORTS

For Wang, one of those countries was Cambodia, where CNA traced his name to a 2016 business registration for Daming IT Services.

WATCH PART 9: Where does a money launderer hide his money? (1:34)

But when the team visited its address on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, residents said the plot of land had lain empty for years. Whether the company ever operated there remains unclear.

Cambodia also offered Wang something else: another passport. It was among various countries offering citizenship through qualifying investments or donations, Koh pointed out.

With his Chinese passport, Wang held four — obtaining Turkish and Vanuatuan passports through similar schemes — which made it easier to open more bank accounts and establish more businesses, including shell companies to hold assets or move money.

Kim Vatanak Sophoan, deputy director-general of Cambodia’s General Department of Identification, stressed that Cambodia “strictly adheres” to its anti-money laundering laws and that criminals could just as easily abuse other countries’ passports.

He added: “The difference is that Cambodia fell victim because they misused Cambodia’s name and nationality, while Singapore fell victim because its financial system was exploited … for money laundering.”

IN THE LAP OF LUXURY IN SINGAPORE

Wang arrived in Singapore in 2019 on his Turkish passport with his wife, son and daughter. And it was not long before he began living it up, with his record rent for the Bishopsgate bungalow making property headlines in 2020.

Two years later, reports said a Chinese buyer bought 20 condominium units at CanningHill Piers for more than S$85 million. Court documents later showed that Wang financed the purchase of 10 units there. 

His assets here included luxury cars worth nearly S$3.4 million and watches worth S$17.4 million.

But why bring dirty money to a country with strict anti-money laundering laws, then live so lavishly? On this, Vickers said Singapore’s political stability, rule of law and ease of doing business appealed to criminals and legitimate investors alike.

Thong Leng Yeng, the executive director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s anti-money laundering department, added: “Criminals make use of the financial centre, like ourselves, to funnel their funds through, to create an appearance of legitimacy.”

Some money launderers also flaunt their wealth to impress property agents and bankers, according to Nicholas Mak, chief research officer at property company Mogul.sg.

“You shouldn’t be asking me where my money comes from because I’m already rich,” he said, describing the impression they seek to create.

RED FLAGS ON THE PAPER TRAIL

Although Wang enjoyed his millions in Singapore for some time, his financial dealings began to raise red flags.

In 2021, about HK$229 million (US$29 million) flowed into his Citibank Singapore account through a remittance agent in Indonesia. The bank’s compliance team grew suspicious because Wang did not live there.

When asked to explain the funds, he produced a statement purportedly from China Merchants Bank, which showed funds leaving an account in his name. His relationship manager helped submit the document and vouched for him.

But months later, the manager came under police scrutiny because of suspected forgery involving a separate deposit of nearly S$1 million into Wang’s account.

Citibank revisited their client’s transactions and filed suspicious transaction reports, adding to information about him and other ultra-wealthy foreigners that the police were already gathering.

By early 2022, investigators were uncovering “a web of individuals who may be connected to each other”, Teh said.

The police found striking similarities: millions parked in property and businesses — with similar corporate structures — assets held under wives and girlfriends’ names, and links to online gambling operations in the Philippines targeting mainland Chinese.

Teh’s team quietly built their case over the months, careful not to tip off the suspects. Then on Aug 2, 2023, authorities in China issued a notice calling on Wang and other fugitives to surrender over alleged illegal gambling offences.

The police in Singapore moved in 13 days later.

THE FORTUNE HE COULDN’T EXPLAIN

After his arrest, Wang maintained his innocence, insisting that his money came from legitimate sources. Teh recalled: “He kept telling me he was in a state of shock.”

Investigators persisted, confronting Wang with financial statements they had established were forged. But even when he later said he was ready to come clean, his explanations varied.

Teh grilled Wang over 28 sessions, asking him “more than 1,000 questions” between August 2023 and April 2024.

“He was unable to satisfactorily account for the monies that he brought into Singapore,” Teh said. “He gave three distinct accounts of his wealth, which were contradictory to each other.”

Wang faced 22 charges in the end. On May 14, 2024, he pleaded guilty to three: two counts of money laundering and one count of fraudulently using a forged document.

Based on sentencing precedents, the benchmark for his money laundering offences was 12 to 14 months, Kumaralingam said. The remaining 19 charges were taken into consideration when Wang was sentenced to 13 months and six weeks’ jail.

His surrender of about S$179 million in assets, about 90 per cent of his seized assets, may have helped. The courts weigh these forfeitures at sentencing, which encourages cooperation with law enforcement, said Kumaralingam.

After a complex investigation that Teh called “a massive marathon”, the outcome brought “a sense of satisfaction and relief” for him.

WHERE IS WANG NOW?

Wang was deported to Japan in June 2024 after serving his sentence. But Singapore’s investigation was far from over. 

By November 2024, 15 of the 17 suspects on the run had agreed to surrender about S$1.85 billion in assets and were barred from returning. Investigations into the other two continued.

In January last year, Wang flew by private jet from the Maldives to Montenegro’s Tivat Airport, travelling on his Vanuatuan passport. Border police arrested him on an international warrant issued by China.

Then in October last year, Montenegro’s Constitutional Court temporarily suspended his extradition, citing concerns about human rights in China. He remains in custody, awaiting a decision on his future.

Back in Singapore, the possessions seized in the S$3 billion case have come up for auction. The first sale of luxury handbags and jewellery fetched more than S$1.1 million. But none of the multimillion-dollar properties found a buyer at the initial auction in September.

Singapore has made asset recovery a priority in its anti-money laundering regime. But that is only one of the challenges it faces.

“Despite our best efforts (to combat financial crime), it won’t be a zero-incident situation,” Thong said. “We’ve got to adopt our measures in a risk proportionate manner … to remain attractive as a financial centre for legitimate businesses and investors.”

Much more than Singapore’s reputation is at stake as well. Laundered money comes from crimes such as fraud and trafficking, which harm people and communities, she noted, stressing that money laundering “is never victimless”.

Watch the micro-factual series, The Billion Dollar Wash, by scrolling through the playlist here.

Source: CNA/dp