SINGAPORE — Jeffrey Ong, the lawyer who went missing along with more than S$33 million from a client's escrow account, was charged with 13 new counts of forgery for the purposes of cheating on Thursday (June 20).

Ong was refused bail at the latest hearing, where new details emerged of the way he fled Singapore on May 13 through Tuas checkpoint to Malaysia.

He was arrested at a Kuala Lumpur hotel — now revealed in a court document as the Vivatel Kuala Lumpur in the city’s Cheras district — on May 29 with the assistance of Malaysian authorities.

The disclosure that Ong fled Singapore on May 13 means he left the country 10 days before a May 23 Singapore Exchange filing by engineering firm Allied Technologies, which first put the spotlight on Ong and his law firm JLC Advisors.

Allied Technologies had been told by JLC Advisors — the law firm holding its escrow account — that S$33.4 million from the account may have been paid out under Ong's instruction.

The firm said then it was making a police report over the matter.

The latest forgery charges come on top of eight charges of cheating and one forgery charge he was already facing.

ONG A 'FLIGHT RISK'

In opposing a bail application, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Nicholas Khoo told the State Courts that when Ong was arrested in Malaysia, he had a stolen Malaysian passport “belonging to a person very close to him in age, and for which no explanations have been provided”.

He cited several other reasons that Ong represented a flight risk, and should be denied bail. When he absconded from Singapore, for example, he disposed of his mobile phone and got a new one with a Chinese SIM card.

DPP Khoo also submitted an affidavit from the investigating officer at the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD). The officer noted that Ong travelled to Malaysia by making arrangements with a friend, identified only as “Nicholas”, for a driver to take him there.

“Arrangements were also made for him to stay in two locations — an office and a hotel, for which he did not pay with credit cards. Further, this is not a case of voluntary surrender, but one where resources were extended and a warrant of arrest had to be executed overseas in order to bring the accused back to Singapore,” the prosecutor said.

Apart from his wife, Ong did not tell anyone of his plans, the CAD officer said in his affidavit.

He added that Ong is likely to face more charges involving other entities, and that the CAD has taken 22 statements from him from between May 31 and Tuesday (June 18). They have also interviewed 15 other people connected to the case.

Ong, the managing partner of JLC Advisors, is represented by Ms Jennifer Sia of NLC Law Asia.

In seeking bail for her client, Ms Sia said Ong has a young son and “hopes to be able to go on bail to spend some time with him and settle some personal matters”.

“He has given his fullest co-operation and intends to remain in Singapore to give his fullest co-operation,” she added.

However, District Judge Luke Tan agreed with the prosecutor and did not grant bail to Ong, saying Ms Sia’s reasons were inadequate and “to some extent, irrelevant”.

Ong’s latest charges state that around March 27 this year, he allegedly made fraudulent statements of accounts for 13 individual months — October 2017 to February 2018, and July 2018 to February 2019 — for JLC Advisors’ Standard Chartered bank account.

He is said to have done so in order to cheat one Chan Yi Zhang into believing sums of around US$4.85 million held by JLC Advisors in escrow, in respect of a settlement involving firms called Airtrust (Singapore) and Wrangwell, were present and unused in the StanChart bank account.

Ong will return to court on July 11, and remains in remand.

PAST CHARGES

Last week in court, he was accused of signing a series of documents pretending to be the sole director and shareholder of Suite Development, one Tan Kwang Yong James.

Ong allegedly did this multiple times on about Feb 18 this year. The matter is said to have 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.

Following his arrest in Malaysia, Ong first appeared in court here on June 1, and was charged with cheating Suite Development. He allegedly did so by deceiving a company called CCJ Investments into believing that Suite Development had entered into a loan agreement with it.

Ong is also accused of dishonestly inducing CCJ Investments to disburse a sum of S$6 million.

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, the court heard then.

Last week, the court heard that three more of JLC Advisors’ clients have also approached the CAD to report unauthorised transactions involving funds held for them by the firm.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Jeffrey Ong fled Singapore on May 13 through Tuas checkpoint to Malaysia using a stolen passport. This is incorrect. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority has clarified that Ong did not use a stolen passport when departing Singapore. We are sorry for the error.