Mainland Chinese woman jailed for five years in Hong Kong for her part in a US$137.8 million money-laundering scheme

2019-5-28

Liu Sujun, 34, allowed the money to be transferred through a bank account in the name of a company she owned in over 2,300 transactions in 2015 and 2016

The case came to light when police investigated an international phone scam targeting a Czech company

A mainland Chinese woman was jailed for five years in Hong Kong on Tuesday over a HK$1 billion money-laundering scheme uncovered when police investigated an international phone scam.

Liu Sujun, 34, allowed US$136.8 million (HK$1.06 billion) to be transferred in and out of a bank account her brother asked her to open for a company under her name between September 2015 and September 2016, the Court of First Instance heard.

Part of the substantial sum came from €997,000 (HK$8.8 million) garnered from a phone scam that targeted a Czech company, whose complaint triggered the investigation.

Liu had claimed to have no idea of what her brother was up to, but sentencing judge Mr Patrick Li Hon-leung refused to accept her explanation on Tuesday.

"It really perplexed me," he said, after hearing that Liu herself had been a businesswoman for more than a decade. "Her involvement could not have been trivial."

The woman from Shenzhen was sentenced after pleading guilty to one count of dealing in property known or believed to represent proceeds from an indictable offence.

The court heard that the police received a report from International Automotive Components in the Czech Republic in September 2016 after the company had been deceived by a fraudulent call.

The caller asked the company to transfer €997,000 to a HSBC bank account in Hong Kong for a deal, which it did. When it realised what had happened, the company alerted Hong Kong police.

An investigation found that US$699,736, which constituted part of that sum, was deposited into the bank account of Xingxinhong Trade Limited, a company owned solely by Liu.

When police looked into the firm’s bank account, it noticed that it had received 1,002 deposits totalling US$136.8 million from various Hong Kong and mainland Chinese bank accounts between September 16, 2015 and September 29, 2016.

During the same period, there were 1,325 transfers totalling roughly the same amount to a string of bank accounts in Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore.

Liu was arrested on January 13 last year when entering Hong Kong. She admitted coming to the city a week before the first deposit in 2015 to open the bank account with an "old neighbour" who had been enlisted by her brother.

Sentencing her, Li also said the case was serious in that it involved a large sum of money and a cross-border element.

Source: SCMP