BDO quit role supporting Singapore family office linked to scam empire

Global accounting firm BDO has quit its role supporting a Singaporean family office that was accused by US and UK authorities of being part of a sprawling international scam empire.

Two employees from BDO — the fifth-biggest accounting network by revenue — resigned as company secretaries to DW Capital Holdings after the US Treasury department imposed sanctions on the family office last month, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.

BDO’s Singapore business had helped incorporate DW Capital in 2018 and appointed two of its staff as company secretaries, which handle administrative duties such as business registration. One of the staff included BDO’s head of company secretarial services in Singapore.

The BDO employees named in DW Capital’s company filings listed BDO’s Singapore headquarters as their address.

South-east Asia’s position as the centre of a $1tn international scam industry was exposed last month when US and UK authorities announced sweeping sanctions against 146 individuals and companies linked to Cambodia’s Prince Group, which was described as a “transnational criminal empire”.

The US government seized $15bn worth of bitcoin connected to Prince Group and charged its founder, Chen Zhi, a 37-year-old Chinese-born Cambodian national, with conspiring to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

Federal prosecutors allege that Prince Group operated scam compounds in Cambodia — staffed by trafficked workers who were forced to steal billions of dollars from victims around the world — and laundered the money through entities in Asia and offshore financial centres.

Some of the proceeds ended up being used to buy high-end property in New York and London, prosecutors said.

Chen’s family office, DW Capital, was on the sanctions list, as was Chen Xiuling, a 43-year-old Singaporean who was the registered director of many of the sanctioned businesses, including DW Capital.

The family office claimed on its website — which has since been taken down — that it was a beneficiary of tax incentives from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The regulator said it was investigating DW Capital but did not respond to queries from the FT over whether the family office received tax incentives or when it began its investigation.

Seventeen companies and three individuals based in Singapore are on the US sanctions list. The city-state’s police carried out their own raid last week on entities and people linked to Prince Group, seizing S$150mn (US$115mn) of financial assets, as well as a yacht, 11 cars and cases of expensive liquor.

The MAS announced last week it had been alerted to suspected money laundering involving Prince Group after financial institutions filed suspicious transaction reports and closed suspicious accounts.

BDO — which operates as a network of national firms overseen by a global umbrella body and offers auditing and compliance advisory, in addition to company secretarial services — tends to serve smaller clients than Big Four rivals Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC.

BDO told the FT it carried out due diligence checks on Chen Zhi when setting up DW Capital in 2018 and continued to screen him but did not identify anything suspicious.

It confirmed it terminated its relationship with DW Capital after being alerted to news reports of the sanctions.

“We take our responsibilities as company service providers seriously and have a robust [anti-money laundering] programme,” BDO said. “This programme enabled us to identify the company as an unsuitable client, and we immediately terminated our relationship.”

DW Capital, Prince Group, Chen Zhi and Chen Xiuling did not respond to requests for comment.

Separately, on Tuesday, Singapore’s parliament passed a law that made caning a mandatory punishment for scammers. Those found guilty face between six and 24 strokes.