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SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued banning orders to two former bank employees for fraud and dishonest conduct, it said on Friday (October 30).
The orders, issued to Lu Chor Sheng and Tan Swee Thiam Timothy, went into effect on Thursday. The cases were unrelated and both have been convicted in state courts, MAS added.
Lu and Tan, who received 17 and nine years respectively, are prohibited from engaging in any activity regulated under the Securities and Futures Act (SFA) and from providing any financial advisory services under the Financial Advisory Act (FAA).
They are also prohibited from participating in the management, acting as a director, or becoming a substantial shareholder of any capital market services company under the SFA and any financial advisory firm under the FAA.
Lu, a former treasury advisor to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison for aiding and abetting fraud, unauthorized modification of the content of the OCBC system, and offenses under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes Law (Confiscation of Profits).
He had used a friend’s OCBC accounts to “place unauthorized forward foreign exchange transactions at out-of-market rates” into the bank’s system, allowing him to buy cheaper and sell higher than prevailing market rates. .
“To make a profit, Mr. Lu placed additional unauthorized trades on his clients ‘accounts as counterparties to trades on his friends’ accounts,” MAS said.
He told his clients that these were wrong trades and that they would be reversed without any loss to them. Lu also instigated his friend to impersonate his clients to place unauthorized forward currency exchange orders with OCBC to shut down unauthorized currency exchange trades that he had performed on clients’ accounts.
When OCBC discovered the unauthorized transactions, it closed the outstanding contracts on Lu’s clients’ accounts, suffering a total loss of S $ 3.09 million.
Lu made a profit of around S $ 1.09 million from his misconduct, which he used to buy foreign exchange and pay off debts, MAS said.
In the second case, Tan, a former United Overseas Bank (UOB) relations manager, had misused a friend’s bank account to make unauthorized wire transfers.
The woman, a UOB client, had entrusted him with her bank accounts, Internet banking security token, and ATM card.
“Between March 2015 and January 2016, Mr. Tan made unauthorized Internet bank transfers in the amount of around S $ 263,500 from this client’s UOB account to his personal bank account, to pay his living expenses.” said MAS.
For this, he was convicted of criminal breach of trust under the Penal Code and offenses under the Computer Misuse Act.
He was sentenced to two and a half years in jail.
