Singaporean man Ng Kheng Wah (57), company directory for T Specialist International, is jailed for illegally supplying North Korea with various luxury goods.
Ng shipped an estimated S$6 million worth of wines, spirits, jewellery, perfumes, cosmetics, and musical instruments to North Korea in violation of the 2006 United Nations Act and Singapore’s Penal Code banning trade with Pyongyang since November 2017.
His company, T Specialist, was found to have supplied the luxury goods to a North Korean department store chain called the Korean Bungsae Shop.
The transactions occurred over the course of several years, from November 2010 to January 2017.
The illegal goods were shipped through Dalian, China. Ng did not declare to Singapore Customs that the final delivery port was in North Korea.
Bungsae Shop, owned by father and son group Li Ik and Li Hyon, paid T Specialist through front companies located in Hong Kong and China.
According to Today, the son reportedly studied in Singapore in 2014.
Ng and his business associate Wang Zhiguo (57) are also charged for cheating five banks of more than US$95 million (S$129 million).
The Bungsae Shop owed T Specialist about US$20 million in 2013.
Facing a cash flow problem, Ng then used fraulent invoices to address his business issue.
Through Wang’s Pinnacle Offshore Trading business, T Specialist got fake invoice financing loans from banks for non-existent goods.
The administrative officer of T Specialist, Sherly Muliawan, filled up templates of the falsified invoices which she submitted to DBS Bank, CIMB Bank, Maybank, RHB Bank, and OCBC.
T Specialist fooled the banks even further by shipping hundreds of cartons of Watari instant noodles.
Ng reportedly paid the loans in full.
Ng was sentenced to two years and 10 months in jail while T Specialist was fined S$880,000. Wang, a Chinese national and Singapore permanent resident, was jailed for one year.
The administrative staff was not charged./TISG