A 47-year-old Nigerian man Amos Paul Gabriel, involved in a scheme to swindle Citibank in New York City has been jailed and fined by a Singapore court for money laundering and other offences.
Gabriel, a Singapore permanent resident, was sentenced to three years’ jail and fined $4,200 last Thursday, May 16.
The money laundering case made headlines in 2009 when Amos was indicted in New York on charges of scheming to steal from a National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) account at Citibank.
Amos and his co-conspirators had in 2008 sent fake signed documents to Citibank appearing to match signatures of officials at NBE, Ethiopia’s central bank.
Citibank transferred US$27.2 million (S$37.2 million) to various accounts before the fraud was discovered.
Details of the elaborate scheme to launder the stolen money were heard at Singapore’s State Courts.
Amos, who was married to a Singaporean woman, received a call from his Nigerian friend Robert Umohette in 2008, asking him to provide a bank account for the transfer of the cheated proceeds.
Instead of using the account of his own company, Amos discussed the matter with a friend in Australia named Mohammad Sohail, also known as Malik.
They agreed to use the bank account of Malik’s company to receive the funds, on the condition that Amos received a cut of the cheated funds as commission, said Deputy Public Prosecutors Kelvin Kow and Shamini Joseph.
A total of US$27.2 million was transferred via Citibank from the corporate account of NBE to accounts in the US, Australia, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Korea as part of the broader money-laundering scheme.
After initially claiming trial, Amos pleaded guilty on Thursday to various charges related to money laundering. He also admitted to traffic offences.
In October 2016, he had driven a blue Lamborghini dangerously on East Coast Parkway, overtaking a van at high speed. The father of the van driver made a police report.
Amos was later found without a valid driving licence in Singapore. He had a licence issued by the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but had not converted it within three months of obtaining his Singapore PR status.
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