SINGAPORE – A former assistant finance manager who misappropriated more than $5 million from his then employer was sentenced to 10 years’ jail on Tuesday.
Ho Kam Weng, 54, who committed the offences when he was heavily in debt, pleaded guilty in March to three counts of criminal breach of trust.
At the time of the offences, he was working for EZY InfoTech, a distributor of IT equipment.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Magdalene Huang told the court in earlier proceedings that Ho started working as an assistant finance manager there in 2009.
As the firm was restricted to certain locations under its distribution agreements, it set up another company – Silver Crown (HK) – in Hong Kong in order to conduct sales in other countries.
DPP Huang added that although Silver Crown and EZY InfoTech were designed to look like completely unrelated entities on paper, the former’s operations and finances were controlled by EZY’s management.
Silver Crown’s assets, including money in its corporate bank account, belonged to EZY and were at its disposal.
To facilitate this arrangement, Ho was assigned to be in charge of Silver Crown’s financial matters, while another EZY employee was in charge of its operational matters.
Tasked to take charge of Silver Crown’s China Construction Bank (Asia) account, Ho was entrusted with its password and banking token.
Some time in 2015, Ho incurred hefty debts to unlicensed moneylenders and began transferring money from Silver Crown’s bank account to his personal bank account. He then withdrew some of the money and transferred the rest to designated bank accounts provided by the unlicensed moneylenders.
His offences came to light when the chief finance officer sensed that something was amiss and made inquiries.
EZY’s management confronted Ho, who confessed to his offences, and the chief finance officer alerted the police on Oct 20, 2018.
It was later revealed that Ho had dishonestly misappropriated more than US$3.8 million (S$5.1 million) from Silver Crown’s account by transferring the money to his account between April 21, 2015, and Aug 15, 2018.
For each count of criminal breach of trust, an offender can be jailed for up to 15 years and fined.
