SINGAPORE — Lawyer Jeffrey Ong Su Aun, who went missing in May last year along with more than S$33 million from a client's escrow account, was charged with four additional counts of criminal breach of trust as an attorney on Tuesday (Aug 11).

In a news release, the police said the four new charges faced by Ong — the former managing partner of JLC Advisors — arose from investigations by the Commercial Affairs Department.

They relate to the misappropriation of S$11,700,020 from a DBS Bank account, which was held in escrow by JLC Advisors for the Catalist-listed engineering firm Allied Technologies.

According to the police, the monies were placement proceeds for a share placement exercise carried out by Allied Technologies in October 2017. 

With the additional charges, Ong faces a total of 57 counts of cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery.

Ong is accused of misappropriating a total of S$33,839,674.97 from Allied Technologies' escrow account from Oct 31, 2017 to Aug 27, 2018.

The 42-year-old, who has been in remand since his arrest in Malaysia last year, was charged in February with forging a cheque for S$33,153,416.56 in April last year.

The prosecution had 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.

Ong was also previously charged with pocketing US$4.85 million (S$6.66 million) from JLC Advisors’ Standard Chartered bank account around Oct 23, 2017, as well as with dishonestly inducing a company called CCJ Investments to disburse a sum of S$6 million in February last year.

Investigations against Ong are ongoing, the police added.