How did Richard Yong slip through
the net?
By Thomas Koshy | Posted: 08 June 2007 0655
hrs
It has now been three weeks since Richard Yong disappeared into the
abysmal refuge of exile shared by fugitives from the law. He left
Singapore in the still of the night just hours after being made a
bankrupt on May 16, for failing to settle preliminary claims of
some $1 million.
The news, which took two weeks to reach the public domain, has
shocked Singaporeans. How could the man who was to "bear the brunt"
of the National Kidney Foundation's (NKF) multi-million dollar
claim after a trial of grand proportions, escape his debt so
easily?
More fundamentally, how could such a high-profile bankrupt exit the
country without being noticed?
The irony of it is that a Mareva injunction preventing Yong from
dissipating his assets had been obtained against Yong five days
before he absconded.
It appears that the application for a Mareva injunction by the
NKF's lawyers was prompted by the discovery that Yong had, since
February when he admitted liability for damages in the NKF's civil
suit, cashed in on his three private properties worth some $7.5
million a strong hint of plans to leave the jurisdiction. So, at
least at that point, he was a known flight risk.
One question that has arisen is how Yong managed to get past the
immigration authorities despite being a bankrupt and, therefore,
not allowed to leave the country except with the permission of the
Official Assignee (OA).
The answer that has surfaced is that he had already absconded by
the time the NKF's lawyers informed the OA that Yong had been made
a bankrupt.
Is this a weakness in the system, one wonders. Does the OA rely on
lawyers to inform them when a person has been made bankrupt? And
then, does the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority rely on the OA
to instruct them to blacklist bankrupts? Are these all unnecessary
bottlenecks in the flow of information?
It would be more efficient if all relevant government agencies
could be automatically notified of a bankruptcy order the moment it
is made by the court.
It was reported recently that the public sector will be spending up
to $1.5 billion on a new computer system called SOE (Standard
Operating Environment) to be used across the entire civil service
by 2010. With a common platform, such instantaneous communication
between agencies and the courts could become the norm.
From the perspective of the NKF and of the donating public, the
bigger issue is whether the charity has been deprived of the
opportunity to recover its lost millions. After all, the prime
objective of the NKF's civil claims was not to punish but to
recover lost funds.
So, did Richard Yong manage to escape with his pockets full of
assets which the NKF might have seized?
It was reported that following his flight from Singapore, he had
sent the NKF notarised papers certifying he had $247 in his bank
accounts; and that the proceeds of the property sales had gone to
settle bank loans.
Since the NKF had already obtained a Mareva injunction against Mr
Yong about a week before he absconded, one wonders what steps had
been taken to enforce this and whether any assets were
secured.
One could also ask whether the Mareva injunction could have been
obtained much earlier was there a reason for the delay?
And then there is the time lag in the release of information into
the public domain was there a reason for this?
As for the way forward, it may assuage the public's concerns to
know the extent to which the NKF will still be able to satisfy the
judgment by recourse against the other three directors who have
admitted liability.
Hopefully, much more information will be forthcoming from the
relevant persons so that some of these questions can be
answered.
If mistakes were made, then acknowledging them will be the first
step on the road to setting things right and preventing a
recurrence.
The writer is a legal academic. This is his personal
opinion.
