Cool, friendly, evasive: CAD investigator on suspect arrested in $3b money laundering probe

SINGAPORE – Turkish national Vang Shuiming was fast asleep at around 6am when his maid knocked on his bedroom door.

A group of police officers, some donning balaclavas, were already in the good class bungalow he was renting in Bishopsgate, which was leased in 2020 for $150,000 a month.

Although the raid on Aug 15, 2023 caught him off-guard, he remained cool. Vang, whose birth name in China is Wang Shuiming, was familiar with police investigations.

The then 42-year-old was a key member of the Cambodia-based Heng Bo Bao Wang gambling syndicate, which also had a presence in China and the Philippines. His brother Wang Shuiting was also a high-ranking member.

Teh Yee Liang, then a team leader in Commercial Affairs Department’s (CAD) International Cooperation Branch said: “Seeing him in person, I was thinking oh, this is the person I will be investigating for an extended period of time.”

Teh, who was seconded to Interpol in October 2026, was among a small number of investigators with the CAD who would go on to spend the next nine months working on Singapore’s biggest money laundering probe.

Just over a year earlier, Vang and his brother had escaped arrest in China when the authorities in Shandong busted the syndicate in May 2022 and rounded up more than 130 members.

Vang was already in Singapore then, having relocated around 2019 with his entire family including his wife, three children and elderly parents.

But the law caught up with him in Singapore that morning.

Teh said Vang was cooperative, leading officers to the collection of luxury watches and designer bags in the 17,100 sq ft property.

Inside a safe, officers found stacks of cash alongside Vang’s passports from China and Vanuatu. He also held Cambodian citizenship, and had planned to obtain citizenship from Saint Kitts and Nevis.

The police eventually seized dozens of items, including a pallet of about 50 bottles of Macallan 25 Years Sherry Oak whisky. Each bottle of the whisky cost between $4,000 and $5,000 then.

Also seized were eight watches worth $17.4 million in total, from brands such as Patek Philippe, Richard Mille, Franck Muller and Chopard, and a Kawai crystal grand piano worth $240,000.

Teh was at the house for about three hours, but his colleagues stayed on longer to secure the items. Simultaneous raids were conducted around the same time in others parts of Singapore.

In total, 27 foreign nationals were implicated in a case that saw them linked to about $3 billion in dirty money and assets.

Vang was among 10 later sentenced and deported. The other 17 either fled the country or just stayed away.

The authorities in Singapore eventually seized cash and assets of 25 of the foreign nationals. They were all barred from returning to Singapore.

Secret briefing

Teh got a call on Aug 14, a day before the raid in 2023, to attend a morning briefing at the CAD headquarters at the Police Cantonment Complex.

Over a dozen officers attended the briefing, which was conducted by the top brass. Each investigator was handed an information packet containing their assigned suspect.

Vang was Teh’s target.

The file on the Turkish national, who had moved to Singapore in 2019, contained photographs, flags for suspected forgery, his financial background and the address in Bishopsgate.

The intelligence had been pieced together by a tight-knit team of officers, who spent months connecting the dots after first receiving information in 2021.

“I had not dealt with something on such a scale before,” said Teh.

“We were told it was unprecedented and that we would be conducting simultaneous raids at various locations, including good class bungalows. We were all very shocked.”

Vang was wealthy.

He and his wife were stakeholders in a Singapore investment company, Ming Huang Investments. He also had interests in a separate local investment firm, Golden WHH, owned by Lin Baoying, another suspect in the case.

He owned or invested in several local properties, including 11 units at CanningHill Piers, and apartments around Clarke Quay and Beach Road.

Just hours after the briefing, about 400 police officers were mobilised for simultaneous pre-dawn raids across Singapore on Aug 15, moving out toward luxury condominiums and landed homes in locations that included Sentosa Cove, Holland Road and Bukit Timah.

Teh and a team of officers had approached the house in Bishopsgate at around 6am.

A Rolls Royce Phantom, Bentley Flying Spur and Toyota Alphard were parked in the basement.

While Vang was cool, the scenes at some other locations were more dramatic, with one of the money launderers jumping off a second-floor balcony.

Vang was eventually brought back to the Police Cantonment Complex for questioning, and charged on Aug 16, 2023, initially with just one count of using a forged document.

Over the next nine months, Teh focused on breaking Vang. In total, he threw more than 1,000 questions over 28 sessions at the suspect.

Although cordial, Vang was not forthcoming.

Teh said: “He was cordial in the sense that he tried to become friends, and at times asked me questions to find out more about me. I had to tell him I’m doing my work, I’m investigating you, and that’s when he would become uncooperative.”

Vang did offer Teh an explanation for his name.

When he was applying for a Turkish passport, he found that the Turkish keyboard did not have the letter ‘W’,. So he used ‘V’ instead.

But when Teh interrogated him about the source of his wealth, Vang was evasive.

He initially claimed it was from a loan business in China, then switched his story. He said his wealth was from winning baccarat games in casinos in the Philippines.

But in his declarations to Singapore banks, Vang said his money was from shareholdings in Chinese hardware trading companies.

When Teh confronted Vang about the discrepancies, he said he made money from loans, gambling and investments.

Vang was eventually slapped with a total of 22 charges, the most among those arrested. Four were for money laundering and 18 were for submitting forged financial documents.

The money laundering charges relate to about $2.4 million held in four bank accounts. The sums were benefits from an unlicensed moneylending business in China.

The forgery-related charges involved forged financial statements from three companies – Xiamen Mingxin Guarantee, Xiamen Yetian Trading and Xiamen Likanghang Trading – to UOB Kay Hian on June 28, 2022, as supporting documentation.

He also submitted a forged bank statement to Citibank Singapore in March 2021.

The High Court refused bail, assessing him a flight risk. Prosecutors noted that cryptocurrency worth more than $3.8 million was withdrawn from Vang’s Binance account on Aug 17, 2023, while he was remanded.

CAD argued then that it showed Vang had connections outside.

Assets worth more than $240 million in the name of Vang and his wife were seized or prevented from being sold. It was reported he held over $35 million in assets overseas.

Vang pleaded guilty in May 2024 to two counts of money laundering and one count of forgery, which related to the financial documents submitted to banks, and was sentenced to 13 months and six weeks’ jail.

The other 19 charges were taken into consideration.

Vang, the sixth in the group to be taken to task, forfeited about $180 million of the more than $199 million worth of assets, cash, vehicles, properties and luxury items belonging to him and his wife which were seized by the police.

The cash and assets forfeited included 15 properties worth $29.6 million in total, and three luxury cars worth $3.38 million in all.

On June 1, 2024, he was deported to Japan.

No repeats

The money laundering probe was sparked by suspicious activities detected in 2021, specifically the use of forged documents to back up the source of funds in bank accounts.

In October 2025, former Citibank relationship manager Wang Qiming, a Chinese national, was sentenced to two years’ jail after he pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery, one count of money laundering and one for the obstruction of justice.

Six other charges, including for forging a document to allow money launderer Vang to deposit $1 million into Vang’s Citibank account, were taken into consideration for sentencing.

In the wake of the probe, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) found shortcomings in the assessment of a customer’s risk and source of wealth and the monitoring of suspicious transactions, and inadequate risk mitigation measures.

Penalties amounting to $27.45 million were imposed on nine financial institutions in July 2025.

An MAS spokesman said core anti-money laundering requirements have not changed as a result of the case, but the authority has clarified its supervisory expectations so that financial institutions apply existing requirements more consistently.

Separately, the Ministry of Law took four law firms and one lawyer to task for anti-money laundering breaches over the purchase of properties in the $3 billion money laundering case, with one of the practices receiving the maximum penalty of $100,000.

Teh told ST that he felt satisfaction and relief when the case concluded. His team had spent significant resources and effort to convict Vang.

“I felt a deep sense of satisfaction because I played a part in ensuring that Singapore’s financial systems are clean. We hope that this episode doesn’t repeat itself.”

Vang’s story did not end in Japan.

In January 2025, he was arrested in Montenegro after flying in on a private plane from the Maldives.

The authorities in Montenegro, where he had a real estate company called Bright Sky Limited, had checked his Republic of Vanuatu passport against an Interpol database.

Vang had an international warrant of arrest against him.

A spokesperson for the High Court in the capital of Montenegro told the investigative journalism group, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, that Vang lost his fight in court against extradition to China in February 2025.