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A Singapore businessman who convinced investors to put a total of S$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) into a nickel trading scheme channeled a third of that into his own accounts, prosecutors said at the start of his trial.
Ng Yu Zhi, a former accountant, faces 42 charges including fraud, forgery and money laundering. He’s accused of leading investors in his Envy Group to believe they could profit from physical nickel trades, thanks to his purchases of discounted metal from an Australian mine. In reality, the scheme was “pure fiction,” the prosecution said in an opening statement.
In fact, no cheap nickel was purchased, so there was none to sell. There was no agreement with the mine, and no forward contracts for the sale of the metal, prosecutors said.
“The Envy companies paid earlier investors not with returns generated from physical nickel trading, but with the moneys invested by other investors,” they said.
Over a period of six years, Ng’s companies received money from a total of 947 investors, including many high-profile figures in the city state, misappropriating nearly S$482 million to fund his lavish lifestyle and extravagant purchases from art and jewelry to high-end cars.
Ng faces 108 charges, but only 42 will proceed, and he pleaded not guilty to those on Tuesday. The prosecution plans to call on evidence from 58 witnesses.
The nickel scam is the latest in a series of scandals in the financial and commodities-trading hub, now working to restore a reputation for good governance.
Earlier this month, former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, 82, was handed a 17-and-half year jail sentence for cheating HSBC Holdings Plc and instigating forgery. In October, S. Iswaran became the first ex-cabinet minister to be jailed in almost half a century, after pleading guilty to charges including obstruction of justice.
(By Yihui Xie)
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