Ex-executives of CW Group, Allied Technologies charged over offences related to JLC’s Jeffrey Ong

[SINGAPORE] Formerly Catalist-listed Allied Technologies’ executive director Kenneth Low and previously Hong Kong-listed CW Group CEO Wong Koon Lup were charged over their alleged conspiracy with JLC Advisors’ former managing partner Jeffrey Ong in misappropriating tens of millions of dollars from the companies.

Low and Wong were charged on Wednesday (Sep 23) with five and 24 charges, respectively. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges, and are on bail of S$300,000 for Low and S$280,000 for Wong pending trial.

Machine-tool manufacturer CW Group and precision engineering company Allied Technologies at the time of the alleged offences maintained escrow facility arrangements with JLC, which acted as their escrow agent.

Four of Low’s five charges accused him of abetting Ong as then a lawyer with JLC, on or before Oct 31, 2017, to commit breach of trust by withdrawing four sums ranging from about S$2.6 million to S$3.2 million from a DBS account in favour of OCBC securities. These sums totalled about S$11.7 million.

The 38-year-old’s fifth charge alleged him of abetting Ong to forge his then partner Vincent Lim’s signature on a DBS cheque dated Apr 15, 2019.

Wong is a Singaporean businessman based in Hong Kong who founded CW Group.

He faces 18 charges in relation to Ong:

• 13 charges for engaging in a conspiracy with Ong to commit criminal breach of trust as an attorney, misappropriating more than S$24 million held in CW Group’s escrow facility with JLC; 
• one charge of conspiring with Ong and another person to conceal from CW Group’s board of directors the misappropriation of the company’s escrow monies;
• and four charges for conspiring with Ong to provide false audit confirmations to CW Group’s statutory auditor EY with regards to CW Group’s escrow facility with JLC.

Wong’s remaining six charges are:

• three charges of misappropriating about S$17 million belonging to CW Group and its subsidiary CW Advanced Technologies; 
• one charge of instigating a person to provide a false audit confirmation to EY;
• and two charges of instigating his finance staff members to falsify CW Group’s financial statements.

Low was arrested in April 2021 and named as the co-accused in five of the charges that Ong was charged for over the alleged misappropriation of Allied Tech’s escrow funds.

Ong was sentenced to 19 years of imprisonment in 2023, after the disbarred lawyer pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including offences of cheating and criminal breach of trust as an attorney.

His offences involved nearly S$76 million of clients’ money, and the prosecutor described it as “the largest amount of money ever misappropriated by a lawyer in Singapore”.

Allied Tech was delisted in November 2022.