Banking Business As Usual 银行业务照常

 Yínháng yèwù zhàocháng 银行业务照常 Banking Business As Usual 

Singapore’s Crackdown is the

‘Tip of the Iceberg’

Billions of hot money is sloshing through the banking system

19 Aug 2023

By John Berthelsen

*From Asia Sentinel*

The monumental crackdown on money laundering that began in Singapore on August 15, possibly triggered by the Chinese government in its Operation Fox Hunt campaign to reel in stolen money estimated so far at US$1 billion, is only a tiny fraction of the billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars hidden in the island republic's banks.

How far the scandal will go, and what effect it may have on the People’s Action Party, which has dominated the government since 1959, is uncertain given the splintered and demoralized opposition, which has long been weakened by contempt and defamation suits brought in Singapore’s courts. The parallels between Singapore and Switzerland here are too big to ignore. 

Both countries' main draw for foreign monies stemmed from their no-questions-asked banking secrecy and supposed immunity to foreign power pressure.

Certainly, so far transparency plainly hasn’t applied to the banking system in Transparency International’s rankings, which placed Singapore fifth in the world for 2022. 

It appears to have required the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who visited earlier this month, to push Singaporean authorities into action.

But the presence of so much money sloshing through the banking system cannot have gone unnoticed. Whether this leads to reform, or whether authorities limit the damage to the Chinese money and leave the rest as business as usual, is another question. Singapore's banking and financial system have come under simultaneous attack and pressure from both the US and China in this regard. 

On August 9, UOB, a Singaporean MNC, announced it would cut ties with banks in Myanmar used as conduits for the Burmese junta to access the global financial system and evade western sanctions.

This development came shortly after a *UN report named Singapore as a key hub for arms deals conducted by the Burmese junta,* as well as a series of visits to Singapore in recent months by high-level US representatives including State Department Counselor Derek Chollet and senior sanctions coordination officials, who met with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and key Singaporean banks in April. On a visit in October 2021, Chollet tweeted about discussing with the MAS "ways to limit the Burmese military regime's access to overseas financial assets."

On March 17, 2009 – more than a decade ago – this reporter was present when the Burmese junta leader Thein Sein, the head of what was then one of the world’s most repressive and poverty-stricken countries, flew into Singapore for a ceremony in which an orchid was named for him in the island republic’s magnificent botanical gardens. Another was named for Thein Sein’s wife. The common wisdom in Singapore is that the orchid honor was bestowed because of the amount of money Myanmar’s generals had laundered out of their benighted country and deposited in Singapore’s banks.

Now Singapore does its largest money laundering bust rivaling the 1MDB scandal, with the arrested targets all of Chinese origins and coming hot on the heels of Wang Yi's visit. This Chinese money laundering bust has shown that the country's financial institutions and professional services have not learned their lesson from the 1MDB saga. Once might be an accident. Twice cannot be down to mere ignorance or incompetence. 

While the Singapore Police Force arrested 10 Chinese individuals on August 15 for their suspected involvement in this case, they are believed to represent only the tip of the iceberg for the true scale of the money laundering operation. According to multiple reports by a Singapore Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao on August 18, hundreds more Chinese mainlanders in a syndicate nicknamed the “Fujian Gang” may be involved, with another 60 local property agents also implicated and assisting with the investigations, a legal euphemism for being questioned.

On August 18, SPF announced that an additional 11 properties in Singapore had been frozen, bringing the total number of properties to 105. A day earlier, Bloomberg reported that Citi, a US bank, and CIMB, a Malaysian one, are among the financial institutions suspected of being used to launder money in this case.

“If the PAP regime is only able to discover money laundering and other criminal activity in our banks after outside and foreign pressure what does that say about us?” asked Kenneth Jeyaratnam, the secretary-general of the opposition Reform Party, on his Facebook page. “If we provide a warm welcome to very dirty businesses…then we can’t expect to escape without a stain on our ‘squeaky clean’ reputation. Meanwhile, the money laundering activity pushes up asset prices and makes property unaffordable for Singaporeans and of course car ownership as well.”

In an indication of just how much money is hidden in Singapore, in March 2019, Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati asked the country’s Directorate General of Taxation to go after Indonesian wealth parked overseas, saying data indicate Indonesians had illegally moved Rp1.3 quadrillion (US$91.3 billion at then-prevailing rates) worth of assets outside of the country.

Most of it was in Singapore, as Asia Sentinel pointed out in an article titled “Indonesia’s Money Laundromat,” where 39,000 Indonesians were then said to be living. According to a 2014 Cornell University Southeast Asia Program study, total Indonesian money in Singapore at a minimum was US$93 billion. According to one study, however, as much as an astonishing US$380 billion had been spirited out of Indonesia alone – 40 percent of Singapore’s total banking receipts.

Among the other dictators, crooks, strongmen, and satraps who are believed to have deposits – or have had, according to other studies – in the Singaporean banking system are Zimbabwe’s former President Robert Mugabe, the late Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos, the jailed Taiwanese President Chen Shui Bian, the disgraced former French Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and many more.

For decades, Indonesia has been in a half-hearted war to repatriate its money, at one point in 2007 blocking the delivery of Indonesian sand used to expand Singapore’s coastline in an effort to force the island nation to agree to an extradition treaty to get back bankers who stole US$13.5 billion from 48 ailing banks during the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis and moved the money into Singaporean banks. They have never succeeded.

In the 2008 global financial meltdown, Indonesia’s Bank Century failed, with US$1.5 billion believed to have been allegedly stolen by the bank’s president, Robert Tantular, according to legal documents filed in Singapore and Mauritius. The Indonesian Bank Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is designed to provide an insurance cover for failing banks, allegedly poured in another US$750 million.

With global watchdogs increasingly cracking down on Switzerland, Singapore has become known as the go-to bolt hole for money flowing in from Cyprus, Russia, Dubai, and Qatar, according to investigators in London and the United States. It is an emerging destination for private wealth management – a code word for hidden money. Its banks are known as among the safest in the world. It has never had a bank failure, although it shut down two Swiss subsidiaries during the mess created by Malaysia’s huge 1Malaysia Development Bank scandal.

As authorities have put pressure on Swiss authorities to open the doors to the alpine nation’s bank records, Singapore has developed its banking secrecy laws to protect money flows, blocking regulations developed by the 36-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on publication of bank customer information. According to a 2017 Boston Consulting Group report, these tight banking secrecy laws had attracted as much as US$1.1 trillion in foreign funds into the banking system.

The access to Singapore-based institutions by less-than-respectable money seems to have reached its apex with the long-running 1MDB scandal, during which now-deposed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his confederate, Low Taek Jho, spirited billions of dollars through the Singaporean system. Najib famously moved US$681 million sent to him by Jho Low through the Kuala Lumpur-based Ambank in 2013, using part of the money to finance the successful 2013 election won by the Barisan Nasional, and then moved the remainder back out to subsidiaries of Swiss banks, both of which were suspended from doing business in Singapore.

Both China and the US have their own motivations for pressuring Singapore to clean up its financial act and move against entities designated by both countries for targeting. The global mood is rapidly turning against offshore tax havens and banking secrecy being used as a cloak for illicit financial hoarding of plundered/criminal funds in the post-Covid era of rising financial inequality, and the resultant increase in social unrest and political discord.

Singapore is already going to lose a major chunk of its international financial competitiveness once the US fully introduces the Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rate (GMCT), something heavily pushed by the Biden administration to achieve broadly similar aims as China: to curb MNCs from profit shifting for tax avoidance/evasion purposes. Now Singapore has shown that it is no longer as immune as it used to be to external pressure on its banking and financial institutions to do law enforcement on illicit funds sheltering within the country, or participate in sanctions against pariah states on the international stage by cutting off their avenues of tax evasion through the country. 

Andy Wong Ming Jun contributed research for this article.

This article is among the stories we choose to make widely available.

©️ 2023 Asia Sentinel.

新加坡的打击行动是

 “冰山一角”

 数十亿热钱在银行体系中流动

 2023 年 8 月 19 日

 约翰·贝塞尔森

 *来自亚洲哨兵*

 8 月 15 日在新加坡开始的大规模打击洗钱活动可能是由中国政府的“猎狐行动”引发的，该行动旨在卷走迄今为止估计达 10 亿美元的赃款，但只是数十亿甚至数万亿美元中的一小部分。 ，隐藏在该岛共和国银行的美元。

 考虑到反对派的分裂和士气低落，该丑闻会蔓延到什么程度，以及它可能对自 1959 年以来一直主导政府的人民行动党产生什么影响，目前还不确定，因为新加坡法院提起的藐视法庭和诽谤诉讼长期以来削弱了反对党的力量。 。 新加坡和瑞士之间的相似之处不容忽视。

 两国对外国资金的主要吸引力源于其毫无疑问的银行保密制度和所谓的不受外国势力压力的豁免权。

 当然，到目前为止，在透明国际的排名中，透明度显然还没有适用于银行系统，新加坡在 2022 年的全球排名中排名第五。

 这似乎要求本月早些时候访问新加坡的中国外交部长王毅敦促新加坡当局采取行动。

 但如此大量资金在银行系统中流动的现象不可能被忽视。 这是否会带来改革，或者当局是否会限制对中国资金的损害并让其余部分一切照旧，则是另一个问题。 新加坡的银行和金融体系因此同时受到美国和中国的攻击和压力。

 8 月 9 日，新加坡跨国公司大华银行 (UOB) 宣布将切断与缅甸银行的联系，这些银行是缅甸军政府进入全球金融体系并逃避西方制裁的渠道。

 这一事态发展是在*联合国报告将新加坡列为缅甸军政府进行军火交易的关键枢纽*以及美国高级代表（包括国务院参赞德里克·乔莱）最近几个月对新加坡进行一系列访问之后不久发生的。 高级制裁协调官员于四月会见了新加坡金融管理局和新加坡主要银行。 在 2021 年 10 月访问期间，乔莱在推特上表示，正在与金管局讨论“限制缅甸军政权获取海外金融资产的方式”。

 2009 年 3 月 17 日（十多年前），当时世界上最专制、最贫困的国家之一的缅甸军政府领导人吴登盛 (Thein Sein) 飞往新加坡参加仪式，本记者在场。 岛上共和国宏伟的植物园里有一种兰花以他的名字命名。 另一个以吴登盛的妻子命名。 新加坡的普遍看法是，授予兰花荣誉是因为缅甸将军从他们这个黑暗的国家洗钱并存入新加坡银行的大量资金。

 如今，新加坡破获了与 1MDB 丑闻相媲美的最大规模洗钱行动，被捕目标全是华裔，紧随王毅访问之后，这起案件变得炙手可热。 中国的这次洗钱行动表明，该国的金融机构和专业服务机构尚未从 1MDB 事件中汲取教训。 一次可能是一场意外。 两次不能仅仅归因于无知或无能。

 虽然新加坡警方于8月15日逮捕了10名涉嫌参与此案的中国人，但据信他们只是洗钱活动真实规模的冰山一角。 据新加坡华文报纸《联合早报》8月18日多篇报道，一个绰号为“福建帮”的犯罪团伙可能涉及数百名中国大陆人，另有60名本地房地产经纪人也参与其中并协助调查。 被质疑的委婉说法。

 8 月 18 日，SPF 宣布新加坡新增 11 处房产被冻结，使房产总数达到 105 处。此前一天，彭博社报道称，美国银行花旗银行和马来西亚银行联昌国际银行 (CIMB) 均被冻结。 涉嫌在本案中洗钱的机构。

“如果人民行动党政权只有在外部和国外的压力下才能发现我们银行的洗钱和其他犯罪活动，这对我们意味着什么？” 反对党改革党秘书长肯尼思·杰亚拉特南 (Kenneth Jeyaratnam) 在他的 Facebook 页面上问道。 “如果我们热烈欢迎非常肮脏的企业……那么我们就不能期望在不玷污我们‘一尘不染’声誉的情况下逃脱。 与此同时，洗钱活动推高了资产价格，使新加坡人买不起房产，当然也买不起汽车。”

 2019 年 3 月，印度尼西亚财政部长 Sri Mulyani Indrawati 要求该国税务总局追查存放在海外的印度尼西亚财富，称数据显示印度尼西亚人非法转移了 1.3 万亿盾（ 按当时的汇率计算，境外资产价值 913 亿美元。

 正如《亚洲哨兵报》在一篇题为“印度尼西亚的洗衣店”的文章中指出的那样，其中大部分都在新加坡，据说当时有 39,000 名印度尼西亚人居住在那里。 根据 2014 年康奈尔大学东南亚项目的一项研究，印度尼西亚在新加坡的资金总额至少为 930 亿美元。 然而，根据一项研究，仅印度尼西亚就偷走了高达 3800 亿美元的资金，占新加坡银行业总收入的 40%。

 据信在新加坡银行系统拥有存款（或根据其他研究，曾经拥有存款）的其他独裁者、骗子、强人和总督包括津巴布韦前总统罗伯特·穆加贝、已故菲律宾强人费迪南德·马科斯、被监禁的台湾总统 陈水扁、名誉扫地的法国前预算部长热罗姆·卡于扎克、马来西亚前总理纳吉布·拉扎克等等。

 几十年来，印度尼西亚一直在一场半心半意的遣返资金战争中，2007年曾一度阻止运送用于扩大新加坡海岸线的印度尼西亚沙子，以迫使这个岛国同意引渡条约以收回资金 1997年至1998年亚洲金融危机期间，这些银行家从48家陷入困境的银行窃取了135亿美元，并将资金转移到新加坡银行。 他们从未成功过。

 新加坡和毛里求斯提交的法律文件显示，在 2008 年全球金融危机中，印度尼西亚世纪银行倒闭，据称该银行行长罗伯特·坦图拉 (Robert Tantular) 窃取了 15 亿美元资金。 旨在为破产银行提供保险的印度尼西亚银行存款保险公司据称又投入了 7.5 亿美元。

 伦敦和美国的调查人员表示，随着全球监管机构加大对瑞士的打击力度，新加坡已成为塞浦路斯、俄罗斯、迪拜和卡塔尔资金流入的首选避难所。 它是私人财富管理的新兴目的地——隐藏资金的代名词。 它的银行被誉为世界上最安全的银行之一。 尽管它在马来西亚发展银行巨额丑闻造成的混乱中关闭了两家瑞士子公司，但它从未发生过银行倒闭。

 随着当局向瑞士当局施压，要求其开放这个阿尔卑斯山国家的银行记录，新加坡制定了银行保密法来保护资金流动，阻止了 36 个国家经济合作与发展组织制定的关于公布银行客户的规定 信息。 根据波士顿咨询集团 2017 年的一份报告，这些严格的银行保密法吸引了多达 1.1 万亿美元的外国资金进入银行系统。

 随着长期存在的 1MDB 丑闻，不那么受人尊敬的资金进入新加坡机构的行为似乎达到了顶峰，在此期间，现已被废黜的马来西亚总理纳吉布·拉扎克 (Najib Razak) 及其同伙刘​​特佐 (Low Taek Jho) 动用了数十亿美元 通过新加坡系统。 2013年，纳吉布通过总部位于吉隆坡的Ambank转移了刘特佐汇给他的6.81亿美元，其中一部分资金用于资助国阵在2013年大选中获胜，然后将剩余资金转回瑞士的子公司 两家银行均被暂停在新加坡开展业务。

中美两国都有各自的动机向新加坡施压，要求其整顿其金融行为，并对两国指定的目标实体采取行动。 在后新冠时代，金融不平等加剧，社会动荡和政治不和加剧，全球情绪迅速转向反对离岸避税天堂和银行保密，这些避税天堂和银行保密被用作非法囤积掠夺/犯罪资金的幌子。

 一旦美国全面引入全球最低企业税率（GMCT），新加坡已经将失去其国际金融竞争力的很大一部分，这是拜登政府大力推动的，目的是实现与中国大致相似的目标：遏制跨国公司利润转移 出于避税/逃税的目的。 现在，新加坡已经表明，它不再像过去那样能够免受外部压力，要求其银行和金融机构对境内非法资金进行执法，或者通过削减资金参与国际舞台上对贱民国家的制裁。 关闭他们在全国范围内逃税的途径。

 Andy Wong Ming Jun 对本文做出了研究贡献。

 这篇文章是我们选择广泛传播的故事之一。

 ©️ 2023 亚洲哨兵