By Shaffiq Alkhatib for The Straits Times
Copyright tnp
A man who bought nearly 28,000 gold bars after receiving more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from a foreign crime was sentenced to five years’ jail on Oct 1.
South Korean Kim Taek-hoon, 64, sent more than 23,500 of the gold bars, hidden inside industrial tools, to his home country and to Japan.
He had earlier pleaded guilty to three counts of cheating – one involving Singapore Customs and two linked to logistics service providers.
He also pleaded guilty to one count each of money laundering and receiving more than $20,000 in cash from overseas without alerting the authorities.
The prosecution said that Kim did not know the ultimate source of the money, but he believed that the funds were sent to him as part of an “illegal activity”. Details of the proceeds of this overseas crime were not disclosed in court documents.
Kim received around $1 million for his involvement in the scheme.
In either 2013 or 2014, a man known as Cha Young-soo told Kim about a “business opportunity”, and asked Kim to accompany him to Singapore. The two men got to know each other while they were both jailed in South Korea for undisclosed offences.
When they arrived here, Cha proposed an arrangement in which Kim would use cash to buy gold bars in Singapore and conceal them in shipments to South Korea and Japan. Kim agreed to it.
Cha also instructed Kim to buy gold bars only from a jewellery wholesaler in Singapore which was not named in court documents.
Cha later made arrangements for shipments or parcels from South Korea and Japan to be sent to Kim in Singapore. The shipments and parcels contained cash concealed in grease pumps.
Deputy public prosecutors David Koh and Wong Shiau Yin stated in court documents that each pump contained at least US$200,000 (S$258,000), and each shipment contained three to four grease pumps.
Only the grease pumps were declared on the shipping documents, the court heard.
After removing the cash, Kim placed the grease pumps back into the same boxes they came in and shipped them to either South Korea or Japan.
Kim kept part of the cash for himself as his reward. He used the remaining cash to buy gold bars from the jewellery wholesaler.
Separately, Cha also sent shipments of air-powered wrenches to Kim in Singapore.
Kim then concealed the gold bars in the wrenches, repacked the tools and exported them to South Korea and Japan.
Kim made these exports in the name of three companies in Singapore.
The DPPs said the companies were controlled by Kim’s friend, who did not know that Kim was concealing gold bars in the shipments.
The prosecutors added that Kim exported the shipments through these companies, declaring that they contained only “air impact wrenches”.
Kim also cheated Singapore Customs by stating that the exports contained only the tools and not the gold bars.
He was arrested in December 2023, shortly after Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department received information that he could be involved in a suspicious shipment which was sent to Japan that same month.
