Ex-Credit Suisse VP who forged bank letters in multimillion-dollar case gets jail term cut on appeal
SINGAPORE: A former bank relationship manager at Credit Suisse had her jail term cut from 13 years to 10 years and seven months after a successful appeal by her lawyers.
Soh Yuan-Yi, a 50-year-old Singaporean, had forged 112 bank instruction letters over seven years to carry out unauthorised transactions on clients’ accounts.
The 22 Credit Suisse accounts involved belonged to 15 clients, and Soh covered her offences by manipulating internal records, causing a net loss of about S$2.7 million (US$2.13 million) to the bank.
Credit Suisse paid S$14.3 million in compensation after the offences were uncovered. However, the appeal judge took issue with this figure and the way it was used.
Justice Hri Kumar Nair found that the trial judge had erred in several respects. These included a finding that Soh had benefited more from the crimes than she had, the fact that she took note of the compensation paid by Credit Suisse, when it should not have been considered at all, and the way she applied her sentencing approach.
Soh had pleaded guilty to 30 charges which included forgery and transferring benefits from criminal conduct, with another 123 charges taken into consideration.
APPEAL FINDINGS
Justice Hri Kumar Nair on Wednesday (Aug 26) agreed with several points made by Soh’s lawyers, led by Mr Navin Thevar from RCLT Law.
He said both sides had disputed the net loss suffered by Credit Suisse and the net benefit to Soh.
District Judge Crystal Tan, who heard the case originally, had accepted that the net loss to Credit Suisse should be S$4.4 million.
She did not take into account the value of a property purchased by Soh and her husband for S$1.37 million, which Soh later conveyed to a client of Credit Suisse. This client later sold the property for S$1.45 million.
Justice Hri Kumar said the value of the property ought to have been taken into account, which would have reduced Soh’s net benefit to S$1.4 million.
As for the figure of S$14.3 million paid by Credit Suisse, this was compensation for both Soh’s offences and certain trades it considered related to Soh but which were not the subject of any charges before the court.
Justice Hri Kumar said no weight should have been placed on this sum, because it included trades beyond the charges, with insufficient facts to ascertain how much of the compensation related to the charges.
Judge Tan said she placed limited weight on this factor, but she should have disregarded it entirely, said Justice Hri Kumar.
He also agreed with the defence that Judge Tan did not properly apply a two-stage sentencing process for several of Soh’s offences.
He thus looked at the case afresh and applied the sentencing framework again, resulting in a sentence of 10 years and seven months.