S’pore company director accused of supplying almost S$6m in luxury goods to North Korea

SINGAPORE — The Singaporean director of two companies was hauled to court on Thursday (July 19) for allegedly violating United Nations (UN) sanctions by supplying luxury goods, including wine, precious jewellery and cosmetics, to North Korea.

Ng Kheng Wah, 55, faced 80 charges under the UN Act and 81 cheating charges under the Penal Code.

He is accused of engaging in a conspiracy with general wholesale trade firm T Specialist International, as well as two individuals — Sherly Muliawan and Li Ik — to supply these goods, amounting to nearly S$6 million, to the Bugsae Shop in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.

This allegedly went on from November 2010 to as recently as January last year. A third person, Li Hyon, is named in charge sheets from January 2016.

Ng is the director of T Specialist and another general wholesale trade company, OCN (Singapore). According to the BBC, the two firms are sister companies.

Court documents did not provide more details on who Sherly Muliawan and Li Ik are.

Under UN sanctions, it has been illegal to directly or indirectly supply luxury goods to North Korea since 2006. Singapore also suspended all commercial trade with Pyongyang in November last year.

Among Ng's multiple cheating charges, he is also said to have engaged in a conspiracy with T Specialist and an individual, known as Wang Zhi Guo, to cheat CIMB Bank on June 6, 2016. It was not stated who Wang Zhi Guo is.

He allegedly submitted a fake invoice to the bank, issued by Pinnacle Offshore Trading to T Specialist for the sale of Watari Instant Noodle, in support of its application for a trade financing loan. This purportedly led to the bank paying US$780,000 (S$1,068,249) to Pinnacle.

Meanwhile, T Specialist faces 88 charges in total. Eighty of them are under the UN Act, while the other eight are under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes Act.

Earlier reports stated that T Specialist and OCN were being investigated for sending luxury goods to the reclusive state.

An NK News report from July last year, which quoted multiple sources, alleged that OCN also runs two small high-end department stores in Pyongyang, selling international and Japanese brand items.

Ng is currently out on S$500,000 bail and will return to court on Aug 30. His bail conditions state that he must surrender all his travel documents.

If convicted under the UN Act, Ng could be jailed up to five years and/or fined up to S$100,000 on each charge.

If convicted of cheating and dishonestly inducing a delivery of property, he could be jailed up to 10 years and fined for each charge.