According to Singapore newspaper The Straits Times, it is understood that the prosecution will ask for a sentence that is beyond the norm given the scale of the investigation and the nature of the offences.
District judge Ng Peng Hong handed down the verdict against Yeo on Wednesday after a 12-day trial in November, stating that Yeo was “unreliable” and “not credible”. He will be sentenced on Thursday.
Yeo was employed by Switzerland-headquartered BSI Bank in Singapore, which was shut down by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Mas) in May 2016, between December 2009 and July 2014.
During that time, he allegedly amassed S$26m (£14.5m, $18m, €17.3m) from various sources, including schemes to defraud BSI.
At trial, he was accused of playing a key role in the facilitation and concealment of the laundering of large sums of money.
Seven other charges against the former wealth planner, which concern cheating, money laundering and forgery, will be dealt with next year.
Third conviction
Yeo is the third former BSI Singapore employee to be convicted, all of whom had ties to Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, to be convicted under the 1MBD probe.
He was one of six BSI Singapore employees referred to the public prosecutor in May 2016 following what Mas described as the “worst case of control lapses and gross misconduct seen in the Singapore financial sector”.
On 16 December, former director Yvonne Seah was sentenced to two weeks in prison and fined S$10,000 for her role in facilitating and failing to report suspicious transactions related to Jho Low.
Seah’s former colleague and supervisor, Yak Yew Chee, was jailed for 18 weeks and fined S$24,000 in November for similar charges.
Jho Low
A Malaysian business, Jho Low has been identified as a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation into the misappropriation of as much as $1bn from the Malaysian development fund.
Investigations found that $153m was transferred from a Coutts Zurich account of Good Star, a firm controlled by Low, to the BSI Singapore account of Abu Dhabi-Kuwait-Malaysia Investment Corp, which Jho Low could access.
Three days later, the money was moved to a BSI account held by Jho Low’s father, Low Hock Peng.
From Low Hock Peng’s account, $110m was transferred to a Swiss account of Selune, a firm beneficially owned by Jho Low.
When the transactions were questioned by BSI Compliance, Jho Low responded via email that he had decided to give his father the money as a matter of cultural respect but his father had decided to accept only a token sum and return the rest of the money to his son.
Yak was convicted of forging letters of reference that vetted Jho Low as a client, with Seah charged for her role in facilitating the forgery and failing to report the transactions.
