Singapore jails Gurkha Contingent officers for running unlawful cross-border money transfer services

Singapore: Five officers from the Gurkha Contingent (GC), Singapore's most trusted police force division, were sentenced to jail terms after they pleaded guilty to operating unlawful cross-border money transfer services, with each man's case involving transactions between SGD 1,03,473 and SGD 2.86 million.

They were given jail sentences on Thursday after they pleaded guilty to charges under the Payment Services Act (PSA), The Straits Times reported.

The Gurkha officers from a special unit of the police force are deployed in sensitive areas here.

Officer Sitaram Tamang's case involved over SGD 2.86 million in total and he was sentenced to five months in jail.

The 40-year-old had pleaded guilty to a charge under the PSA involving nearly SGD 1.6 million. Three other charges were also considered during sentencing.

Dik Bahadur Gurung, 32, was sentenced to 14 weeks in jail after he pleaded guilty to two charges relating to more than SGD 1 million in total.

Ganga Prasad Rai, 43, pleaded guilty to two charges involving more than SGD 6,00,000 and was sentenced to 10 weeks in jail.

Ashok Kumar Thapa Magar, 39, and Mingmar Sherpa, 44, pleaded guilty to one charge each under the PSA.

Mingmar's case involved nearly SGD 4,72,000, and he was sentenced to seven weeks in jail, while Ashok, whose case was linked to more than SGD 1,03,000, was ordered to spend four weeks behind bars.

The prosecution said that a sixth man, Pratik Tamang, 41, is linked to some of the charges.

He joined the GC in 2004 and returned to Nepal in February 2022 after his retirement. He is still at large, according to the Strait Times.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Brian Tan told the court that sometime in or before June 2021, Pratik began offering a money remittance service to the other GC officers within their camp.

According to court documents, he later recruited Ganga and Dik to work with him. He also engaged Sitaram to help him collect the money.

Pratik was already in Nepal when Sitaram worked with him between February and July 2022 to provide an unlawful payment service in Singapore.

DPP Tan said, "Under the arrangement, GC officers looking to remit money from Singapore dollars to Nepalese rupees (NPR) from Singapore to Nepal would contact Pratik via his mobile number.

"After informing Pratik of the amount in dollars that they were looking to remit, Pratik would first transfer the equivalent amount in NPR to the remitters' beneficiaries in Nepal."

He would then ask the remitters to contact Sitaram in Singapore to transfer the equivalent value in dollars to Sitaram's bank account linked to the payment platform PayNow.

Nearly USD 1.6 million involving 111 deposits went through the bank account.

After that, Sitaram would arrange to hand over the remittance monies in dollars to Pratik, either by PayNow transfers to the latter's bank account or in cash to Pratik's friends.

Between February and July 2022, Ganga engaged in a conspiracy with Sitaram and Pratik to offer a cross-border money transfer service. Ganga then collected more than SGD 2,43,000, which he handed over to Sitaram.

Ganga later broke off his arrangement with Sitaram and Pratik and began working on his own. He provided a similar service from August 2022 to March 2023, involving over SGD 3,83,000.

Both Sitaram and Ganga did not make any profit from the remittances.

Meanwhile, Dik worked with Sitaram and Pratik to offer such a service between February and July 2022. He collected nearly SGD 5,50,000, which he handed to Sitaram, the court was told.

He later stopped working with the pair and worked on his own from August 2022 to January 2023, and this offence involved nearly SGD 5,00,000.

The DPP said that Dik earned an estimated profit between SGD 1,750 and SGD 2,450.

Separately, the DPP said that Mingmar committed the offences with his Nepalese wife, Pema Sherpa, 43, who is now based in Canada and is at large.

According to court documents, she started offering a money remittance service to QC officers within their camp in September 2022.

DPP said that as Pema needed a bank account to receive the remittance monies, her husband handed over the details of his bank account to her for this purpose. He also shared his PayNow details with her.

Between September 2022 and March 2023, Mingmar received more than SGD 4,70,000 in his bank account as remittances through 183 transactions.

In an unrelated case, Ashok, who provided a similar service, received more than SGD 1,03,000 in his bank account from February to July 2022 as remittance monies through 26 transactions.

The offences involving all five men came to light following a raid of the GC camp near Mount Vernon Road in March 2023.