Inside the S$3b money laundering case and the undoing of Wang Shuiming’s crime empire

Detailed summary

CNA’s 25-part micro-factual series, The Billion Dollar Wash, goes behind the scenes of Singapore’s S$3 billion money laundering scandal, gaining access to the investigation and…

CNA’s 25-part micro-factual series, The Billion Dollar Wash, goes behind the scenes of Singapore’s S$3 billion money laundering scandal, gaining access to the investigation and tracing one man’s remarkable crime journey.

SINGAPORE: It was the morning when the police blew open Singapore’s biggest money laundering case. As they swooped on a Good Class Bungalow in the Tanglin area, a rags-to-riches life of crime was about to come to an end.

Inside that bungalow along Bishopsgate — whose monthly rent was S$150,000 (US$117,000) — was Chinese-born Wang Shuiming, who would become a key figure in the case.

His capture on Aug 15, 2023, was part of a coordinated raid on luxury homes across Singapore, involving more than 400 officers.

The scale of the operation and assets to be seized were such that investigation officers at the briefing the day before “were all shocked”, recalled Teh Yee Liang, a former team leader in the Singapore Police Force’s Commercial Affairs Department.

Ten suspects were arrested. The investigation later widened to 17 other suspects who fled Singapore, with S$3 billion in assets seized or frozen in total.

And among those arrested, Wang — also known as Vang Shuiming — had the most assets seized, amounting to about S$199 million held by him, his wife and their companies.

How did a boy raised in poverty become so wealthy, living a lavish lifestyle in Singapore, only for most of his ill-gotten gains to be disgorged?

That question drives The Billion Dollar Wash, CNA’s second micro-factual series following last year’s Merger To Separation.

Opening of the article, excerpted from CNA. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.