Singapore authorities seized or froze assets worth more than S$2.8 billion ($2 billion) in one of the city-state’s largest money laundering investigations, a senior official said on Tuesday while signaling the government could tighten immigration rules to curb illicit inflows, Bloomberg News reported. The amount disclosed to parliament by Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo is higher than the S$2.4 billion previously announced. The assets included 152 properties, 62 vehicles, thousands of bottles of liquor, cryptocurrencies, gold bars and jewellery.
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Authorities arrested disgraced crypto hedge fund co-founder Su Zhu Friday, the latest detainment of a star from the crypto industry’s last bull cycle, YahooFinance.com reported. Singaporean authorities apprehended Su Zhu, 36, Friday afternoon at the country’s Changi Airport while he was attempting to leave the country. Singaporean courts placed a “committal order” against him according to Teneo, the court-appointed joint liquidators in the bankruptcy for Zhu’s firm, Three Arrows Capital Ltd. The court order, placed on Sept.

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Singapore's central bank said on Tuesday it was looking into whether banks involved in a S$2.4 billion ($1.75 billion) money laundering scandal in the global wealth hub had taken all reasonable steps to mitigate risks, Reuters reported. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will take action if its findings reveal shortcomings in the banks' controls, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Singapore police last month arrested and charged 10 foreigners including from China, in one of the biggest anti-money laundering swoops.
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Singapore’s approach to crypto became more conservative after the collapse of FTX but the island remains crypto friendly overall, said Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, chief executive of the Binance digital-asset exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The Hong Kong crypto regime that took effect mid-year only allows a limited number of tokens for trading by retail investors, he said Thursday via video link at the Token2049 conference in Singapore. Tighter regulations generally have prompted many traditional financial institutions to hold back on offering cash to crypto services and vice versa, he added.
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Singapore’s central bank imposed nine-year prohibition orders on Su Zhu and Kyle Davies for transgressions at their collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, Bloomberg News reported. The orders from the city-state’s financial watchdog took effect Wednesday and ban both men from any regulated activity, according to a Monetary Authority of Singapore statement on Thursday. Zhu and Davies are also prohibited from managing, being directors of, or becoming substantial shareholders of any capital market services company under the Securities and Futures Act, the statement showed.
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Financial institutions in Singapore are scouring client records after police raided a sprawling criminal organization with stockpiles of cash—and dozens of bank accounts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Police officers and agents in the city-state arrested 10 foreign nationals in mid-August on charges including fraud and money laundering. The arrests followed a series of raids that led to the discovery of $630 million worth of properties, cars, luxury goods and cash, and $81 million of assets held across 35 bank accounts.
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Some of the biggest local and international banks in Singapore are becoming embroiled in one of the city-state’s largest money laundering cases involving more than S$1 billion ($740 million) of assets, Bloomberg News reported. In charge sheets seen by Bloomberg News, some of the individuals who were arrested and charged this month held funds totaling millions — from unlicensed moneylending in China and illegal gambling — in United Overseas Bank Ltd. and the local units of Citigroup Inc. and RHB Bank Bhd.
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A Singapore judge handed a 12-month prison term to a businessman for conspiring to misappropriate money in the Wirecard AG scandal, Bloomberg News reported. Henry Yeo, a director at Jacobson Fareast Marketing Services Pte, was convicted after pleading guilty to three charges in a Singapore state court on Tuesday. “Wirecard Asia suffered a total loss of S$123,070 ($91,072) as a result of the accused’s participation in the conspiracy to dishonestly misappropriate money from its account,” deputy public prosecutor Vincent Ong said in court.
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Singapore’s financial regulator imposed penalties amounting to a total of S$3.8 million ($2.8 million) on four financial institutions for breaches related to the Wirecard AG scandal, Bloomberg News reported. DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Citigroup Inc., Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. and Swiss Life Holding AG were found to have inadequate money laundering and terrorism financing controls in place when they dealt with parties linked to Wirecard, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement on Wednesday.
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Singapore plans to more aggressively regulate electricity markets as price jumps intensify, again threatening to hurt the retailers that sell it to businesses and households, Bloomberg News reported. The Energy Market Authority will cap wholesale power prices from July 1 using a formula tied to natural gas and generation costs, it said in a document on its website. That comes after they jumped as much as 3,000% this year despite sharp drops in the cost of liquefied natural gas, the nation’s main fuel.
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