SINGAPORE – Singapore Customs found discrepancies when it checked on a freight forwarding company and investigated the business.
It was found that the company’s sole director, Chin Yew Wen, engaged in a scheme where he pocketed more than $400,000 for himself.
Chin, 56, was fined $2,380,000 in court on Tuesday (July 5) after he pleaded guilty to two charges of committing fraud to evade paying the goods and services tax (GST).
Two similar charges and four other charges of falsification of documents were taken into consideration during sentencing.
If Chin does not pay the fine, he must serve 32 months’ jail.
Last month, another freight forwarding company director was fined $4,419,000 and jailed eight months for committing fraud to evade paying GST on the import of goods and for falsifying documents.
Singapore Customs said on Tuesday that during the check on Chin’s company, GLS Shipping, it discovered discrepancies between copies of a cargo clearance permit submitted by the importer and by the company.
Cargo clearance permits are required by an importer to account for the import and tax payment of the goods.
In this case, the value of the goods in the importer’s copy of the permit was higher than the value in the copy provided by GLS Shipping.
Investigations revealed that between November 2017 and July 2020, Chin submitted false values of goods when making declarations for 918 permits.
Said Singapore Customs: “He edited invoices furnished by importers to reflect lower values and declared to Customs the lower values.
“Upon approval of the (permits) and payment of GST based on the lower values, Chin edited the (permits) to reflect the actual value of the goods and gave the edited (permits) to the importers in order to collect the rightful amount of GST from them.”
Chin pocketed the difference between the GST paid by the importers to GLS Shipping and the GST paid to Customs, which totalled $433,484.49.
