4 suspected core members of Hong Kong syndicate arrested over HK$600 million money-laundering case involving 750 bank accounts over 2 years
- Customs says suspicion sparked when it was observed the money held in suspects’ accounts was not commensurate with their incomes
- Half of all the account holders involved believed to be mainlanders, with authorities still trying to track them down
Hong Kong customs officers have arrested four alleged core members of a money-laundering syndicate behind HK$600 million (US$76.4 million) suspected to have been funnelled through more than 750 bank accounts over the past two years.
An investigation revealed three of them set up e-wallets on a cryptocurrency trading platform in Singapore that were used to collect HK$50 million in Tether (USDT) before transferring this into 64 local bank accounts belonging to the four.
“We discovered that multiple times, the [holders of three e-wallets] converted cryptocurrency into US dollars and then transferred the money into their local bank accounts in several minutes on the same day before the funds were channelled out,” Assistant Superintendent Ryan Chan King-wai of customs’ syndicate crimes investigation bureau said on Saturday.
He added that the syndicate made use of the anonymous features of cryptocurrency trading to help others transfer money from unknown overseas sources into Hong Kong to hide the origin of the funds.
The remaining HK$550 million was transferred from 440 other personal accounts and those of shell companies in Hong Kong between February 2020 and March 2022.