Singapore Bans Former HSBC and UOB Bankers for Fraud and Dishonesty

(Bloomberg) -- Singapore has meted out lengthy bans to convicted former HSBC Holdings Plc and United Overseas Bank Ltd. bankers for fraud and dishonest conduct.

Emeline Tang, a former HSBC employee, was banned from providing any capital markets and financial advisory services for 20 years, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement on Wednesday. Former UOB employee Nguyen Duy Minh was banned for 12 years and John Koh, previously at NTUC Income Insurance Co-operative Ltd., was barred for 10 years, from providing financial advisory services, the statement said.

Tang, who has been sentenced to 10 years and six months in jail, cheated five people into handing over more than S$5 million ($3.7 million) on the pretext of placing the money in fixed deposit accounts with the bank, the statement from the regulator said.

Nguyen, who has been sentenced to three years and nine months in jail, sold fake financial products to customers and forged documents to buy financial products without their knowledge, according to the statement. Koh misappropriated insurance premiums amounting to about S$500,000 collected from 11 customers, and has been sentenced to four years in jail, the MAS said.

“Their egregious misconduct caused considerable monetary losses to the victims,” Lee Boon Ngiap, MAS’s assistant managing director for capital markets, said in the statement. “MAS will act firmly and decisively against financial services professionals who undermine consumers’ trust and work to keep such unsuitable persons out of the industry.”

The bans took effect from April 5 following the convictions in the Singapore courts.

MAS has sanctioned numerous bankers in recent years for offences related to the scandal at 1MDB, Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund. In December, for example, it doled out a lifetime ban from working in the securities industry to former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Tim Leissner, following Leissner’s guilty plea to criminal charges laid out against him by the U.S. Department of Justice.

--With assistance from Stephen Stapczynski.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joyce Koh in Singapore at jkoh38@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Russell Ward

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.