SINGAPORE — The managing partner of law firm JLC Advisors, who went missing in May last year along with more than S$33 million from a client's escrow account, was hauled back to court on Monday (Feb 24). For the first time, he was charged over the missing loot.

Jeffrey Ong Su Aun is now accused of misappropriating S$33,839,674.97 in total from engineering firm Allied Technologies' escrow account from Oct 31, 2017 to Aug 27, 2018.

The 42-year-old, who has been in remand since his arrest, was also charged with forging a cheque for S$33,153,416.56 around April 15 last year — a month before he fled Singapore on May 13, 2019. 

He purportedly faked the signature of JLC senior partner Vincent Lim on the cheque. 

The prosecution said that he showed the cheque to Allied Technologies to falsely prove that the money was still in the escrow account. An escrow account is used predominantly by solicitors here to control the flow of funds during various stages of the transaction for a project, for instance, the sale of a property.

When Ong last appeared in court in June last year, the court heard that he fled Singapore 10 days before a May 23 Singapore Exchange filing by Allied Technologies, which first put the spotlight on Ong and JLC Advisors.

Allied Technologies had been told by JLC Advisors that S$33.4 million from their account may have been paid out under Ong's instruction.

About two weeks after absconding, Ong was arrested in a Kuala Lumpur hotel while holding on to a stolen Malaysian passport. He had disposed of his mobile phone and gotten a new one with a Chinese SIM card before fleeing.

Prosecutors previously said that he got a friend to take him to Malaysia and made arrangements to stay in two locations, an office and a hotel, which he did not pay for with credit cards.

Apart from his wife, Ong did not tell anyone of his plans, an officer from Singapore's Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) said in his affidavit.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Nicholas Khoo told the court on Monday that CAD is still conducting investigations.

Ong is represented by Ms Jennifer Sia of NLC Law Asia. He will return to court on April 7.

These are the charges that he faces:

Criminal breach of trust as an attorney

He was charged on Monday with misappropriating about S$33 million from Allied Technologies' escrow account.

Apart from that, he was previously charged with pocketing US$4.85 million (S$6.64 million) from the law firm’s Standard Chartered bank account around Oct 23, 2017.

Forgery for the purpose of cheating

He allegedly made fraudulent statements of accounts for the said StanChart bank account from October 2017 to February 2019, in order to cheat one Chan Yi Zhang into believing that the US$4.85 million held by JLC Advisors in escrow was present and unused in the bank account. 

The funds were meant for a settlement involving two firms — Airtrust (Singapore) and Wrangwell.

Court documents did not state who Chan Yi Zhang is.

On Monday, Ong was also charged with forging the S$33.1 million cheque.

Cheating

Ong allegedly deceived a company called Suite Development by tricking another company — CCJ Investments — into believing that Suite Development had entered into a loan agreement with it.

He is said to have done this several times on Feb 18 last year by signing a series of documents pretending to be Suite Development’s sole director and shareholder. 

The matter purportedly involved a sum of S$16 million and the signing of documents, such as a shareholder’s resolution and a deed of guarantee, between the two companies.

When he was first hauled to court on June 1 last year after his arrest, he was charged with dishonestly inducing CCJ Investments to disburse a sum of S$6 million in February last year.

Some S$3.3 million was used to refinance Suite Development's mortgage loan and about S$2.7 million was deposited into the client account of JLC Advisors, court documents stated.