Accountant found guilty of misappropriating over S$40m to fund gambling habit

SINGAPORE — For over a decade, Malaysian accountant Ewe Pang Kooi took more than S$40 million from 21 companies and two entities to fund his gambling habit.

He had been tasked to liquidate the companies and was managing the finances of the other two. Ewe was the managing partner of accounting firm Ewe Loke & Partners (ELP) and director of consulting firm E&M Management Consultants.

It was only in July 2012 that his crimes came to light after he confessed to an employee of one of his clients, technology company Hewlett Packard (HP). This was after he tried to use part of the money he pocketed to repay what he had taken from the companies.

By then, Ewe had already racked up 693 offences.

On Friday (March 15), after a five-day trial, the High Court found the 65-year-old guilty of 50 charges of criminal breach of trust as an agent — the most aggravated form of criminal breach of trust under the Penal Code.

Ewe, who could be jailed for life, will be sentenced at a later date.

He was tried in court a few months after the Court of Appeal clarified the law in the landmark City Harvest Church case in February last year that the offence of criminal breach of trust as an agent applied only to people who made a living by offering services as agents. That ruling confirmed that the six church leaders, including its founder Kong Hee, should not be put under the category.

Passing the verdict on Friday, Justice Chan Seng Onn said that the financial services which Ewe had provided “all fall squarely within the exact type of mischief” that that particular criminal breach of trust provision was intended to curtail.

“If the public cannot trust its liquidators and receivers to maintain high ethical and professional standards, the entire insolvency process would undoubtedly fall apart,” he added.

This is all the more important due to the “reality of modern society” where individuals “cannot be expected to undertake all tasks on (their) own”, said Justice Chan.

Noting that it is a requirement for entities to hire an approved liquidator in the cases of court-ordered or creditors’ liquidations, he said it was inherent in the duties of a professional agent to be entrusted with the property of others.

“Therefore, it is only where the public has utmost faith in the integrity of these professional agents that the system can function and flourish.”

Ewe’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Michael Khoo, had argued that his client was never in the business of a professional agent nor did he hold himself out as providing professional agency services.

To this, Justice Chan ruled that it was apparent that Ewe had offered his services as a liquidator to the “community at large”. ELP got insolvency clients through referrals and walk-ins, which suggested that its liquidation services were offered to the public.

The judge then noted that Ewe had acted as liquidator for 68 companies from 2007 to 2012. Six out of the 21 companies from which he took money were subsidiaries of HP.

As an appointed liquidator, he was able to transfer the assets into bank accounts for which he was an authorised signatory, and that was what he did for the 21 companies he liquidated, said Justice Chan.

Ewe did the same for the assets of an individual, Mr Prem Ramchand Harjani. He took control of the assets on behalf of security brokerage firm Merrill Lynch Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated and he “misused” almost S$680,000 of the man’s money, said the prosecution.

When he was appointed as one of the signatories of a company called Technology Partners International (TPI) which had outsourced financial management services to E&M from 2007, Ewe also made withdrawals and deposits without seeking the firm’s approval.

By July 2012, he had incurred a net loss of S$180,000 for TPI.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Hon Yi and Nicholas Khoo said it was significant to note that the entrustment of dominion over the monies in all instances was not incidental, but “an integral and necessary element” of the job Ewe was appointed to perform.