On the run for 19 years in an SGD 72 million embezzlement case, Singapore tycoon Ng Teck Lee, 58, and his wife Thor Chwee Hwa, 55, were arrested in Malaysia yesterday and charged in a Singapore court today.
A media release from the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in Singapore said that Ng was Chief Executive Officer of Citiraya “at the material time of the offence” and that he left Singapore with his wife in 2005 when the CPIB “first investigated the case”.
The arrests of Ng and Thor were made by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), whose agents then handed over the two fugitives immediately to the CPIB. Further investigations are on-going.
CPIB would like to thank MACC for their strong support in rendering assistance to CPIB on this case. The successful arrest of the two Singaporean fugitives involved in this significant corruption case after almost two decades attests to the longstanding ties and close cooperation between CPIB and MACC. There is zero-tolerance and no safe haven for those who choose to break our laws by engaging in corrupt or criminal activities. CPIB will spare no effort to track them down wherever they may hide and bring them to face justice in Singapore.
Vincent Lim, Director Investigations, CPIB
Citiraya had been in the business of recycling and recovering precious metals from electronic scrap, said the media release. The company then changed its name to Centillion Environment & Recycling Ltd, it added.
Reporting on the matter and quoting The Straits Times, the Singapore news website Mothership said that the clients of Citiraya “included semiconductor giants like AMD, Intel and Infineon”, but Ng did not extract the precious metals from the scrap, and sold the scrap to buyers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, instead.
The former Citiraya CEO made a fortune of SGD 72 million through this illicit practice of selling the scrap, instead of extracting the precious metals from the scrap, as his company was supposed to. His wife was part of the corrupt business practice.
In the 19 years during which the former CEO and his wife were on the run, law enforcement agencies tried various methods to catch them — issuance of immigration stoplist; Police Gazette; Singapore Warrant of Arrest; and International Warrant of Arrest through Interpol.
The charges against them, as laid out in the Singapore court, are as follows:
● Charge against Ng Teck Lee
One charge of an offence punishable under Section 408 of the Penal Code, Chapter 224, for allegedly committing criminal breach of trust as a servant by dishonestly misappropriating electronic scraps of various companies, that were entrusted to him, to his own use. Ng instructed certain employees of Citiraya not to crush the electronic scraps, and to repackage, and export them.
● Charge against Thor Chwee Hwa
One charge of an offence under Section 44(1)(a) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (CDSA) (Chapter 65A), punishable under Section 44(5) of the CDSA. Thor allegedly had an arrangement with Ng to open a Credit Suisse Hong Kong Branch account in her name, which she had reasonable grounds to believe that the said account would be used to retain the benefits from Ng’s criminal conduct.
Mothership reported, quoting ST, that Ng’s brother was the general manager of Citiraya at the time of the embezzlement and this GM would deliver the illicitly diverted scrap to a warehouse managed by Thor’s brother.
The diverted scrap would be bought by syndicates based in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and then the scrap would be repackaged and sold as new products, as per a report from the ST archives.
This embezzlement racket came to light through a complaint made in December 2004, which alerted the authorities. But in 2005, as soon as the CPIB began investigations, Ng and Thor fled Singapore — they stayed on the run, until their arrest on 3 December 2024.
Mothership said: “[The] CPIB later discovered that Ng had allegedly misappropriated 62 shipments of electronic scrap, amounting to approximately 89 tonnes, between 2003 and 2004.” He had also paid bribes amounting to SGD 2 million to Citiraya staff and to the staff of client companies, in order to their buy their silence.
Many of the people involved in this Citiraya embezzlement case have been convicted and given prison terms. The masterminds now await trial following their arrest.
