SINGAPORE – A judge ordered a man to include about $10 million of his wealth to the matrimonial pool of assets to be divided in his divorce, to signal the court’s “utter contempt” at how the man tried to hide his wealth from his former wife.
Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Abdul Kadir said the man’s actions were among the most brazen attempts to conceal one’s assets in divorce cases the courtshaveseen.
“It represents a fraud not just on the court, but on all of the parties involved in the litigation and the wider justice system,” he said in a judgment released on Jan 9.
He also awarded the man’s former wife 69 per cent of the matrimonial assets of about $10.2 million – which was more than the 50 per cent she had asked for.
Before the sum of about $10 million was added, the couple’s matrimonial assets amounted to onlyslightly over $100,000.
In the end, the woman was awarded about $7 million of the assets, leaving the man with about $3.1 million.
The judge said that the 39-year-old man “indisputably possesses” millions of dollars in assets, but he painted an “utterly unbelievable picture of a net financial worth of just tens of thousands of dollars”.
In the judgment, the judicial commissioner said: “The husband has hidden almost the entirety of his assets over the years from view in order to do his best to shoehorn the court from being able to sensibly dispense justice, coming up with a myriad of excuses for why no objective evidence of their value isavailable, and why, therefore, he should be allowed to declare all of these varied assets to be worthless.
“The response by the court must reflect the utter contempt that it has for such behaviour.”
The couple at the centre of the case are a 38-year-old Malaysian woman and her Australian husband. They have a six-year-old child, whose gender was not stated in the judgment.
The woman works in Singapore, and the child attends a childcare centre here. The man moved out of their Singapore home in 2022, and the woman filed for divorce less than a year later.
The real size of the man’s wealth is a key contention at the heart of their dispute.
Their occupations were not given in the judgment, though the man said he is self-employed.
Initially, the man declared onlythree bank accounts with sums adding up to a total of $11,732, and said his CPF account had no money.
He also claimed he does not own shares in Singapore or overseas, among other things.
The woman filed a discovery application, which is an application to the courtsto compel the man to provide documents and information relating to his assets and expenditure, among other things.
The courtsapproved her application for various documents, such as his income tax statements in Singapore and Australia, the financial statements of companies he owns in various countries, and the value of a family trust held in the man’s name.
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In response to the application, the man said his salary was $7,500 a month, but he did not produce any documentation to back this up.
He claimed that all the documents that could reveal the value of his overseas business entities were unavailable, and that the family trust account has had no income since its inception.
He also declared another nine bank accounts. However, he failed to give any documentation for some of these accounts and provided incomplete statements for other accounts.
The man produced onlyhis Australian superannuation account after the discovery application, which has about $38,000.
Through the discovery application, the woman found out he is a director and shareholder in a “well-resourced” group of companies that operates in many countries, including Australia, Indonesia and Singapore.
She discovered that he received between A$2,500 (S$2,100) and A$10,000 in monthly payments in 2023 from the Australian entity within this group of companies.
He also holds more than 80 per cent of the shares of the Indonesian entity within the group. The Indonesian entity has a paid-up capital of about $12 million.
But the man claimed this group of companies was worth nothing, and again failed to show any documentary proof to back his claims.
Besides this group of companies, he also has shares or interests in other firms.
The judicial commissioner said: “Even on the most charitable reading of the husband’s affidavit in response to the discovery order, it would be impossible not to conclude that the husband was committed to hiding his assets and coming up with farcical reasons of why he was not able to comply with his disclosure obligations.”
The judge drew an adverse inference from the man’s failure to make full and frank disclosure of his assets.
In cases of adverse inference, the courtsmay infer that the evidence is unfavourable to one’s position when a person fails to produce evidence he possesses that is demanded of him.
Eden Law Corporation managing director June Lim said that in such cases, the spouse can ask the courtto determine the value of the undisclosed assets by the offending spouse and include it in the matrimonial pool for division, or increase theshare of the matrimonial assets for the non-offending spouse.
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The judicial commissioner referred to the man’s shareholding in the Indonesian entity, which works out to be about $10 million, as it was the only meaningful proxy available for his wealth.
The judge said he was unable to ascribe a value to the man’s other business interests, given the man’s attempts to obfuscate his actual net worth.
Besides ordering the man to include about $10 million in the matrimonial pool of assets for division, the judge also gave the woman an additional 10 per cent for her share of the assets.
The consequences of hiding one’s assets should be made “sufficiently severe” so that couples are encouraged and fully incentivised to give a full and frank disclosure about their wealth, the judicial commissioner said.
Besides the matrimonial assets, the couple also fought over other issues such as the child’s custody and maintenance.
The judge awarded the couple joint custody of the child, even though the wife wanted sole custody.
The woman also wanted spousal maintenance for a year, which the judge declined to award. While her occupation is not given in the judgment, it was stated she earns almost $15,000 a month.
The judicial commissioner also determined the child’s maintenance to be $3,700 a month, excluding school fees. The parents have to each fork out half of this sum.
Ms Stephanie Looi of Constellation Law Chambers acted for the woman, while Mr Pratap Kishan of Kishan Law Chambers was the man’s lawyer.
Mr Ivan Cheong, head of the Singapore family law team at Withers KhattarWong, said it is “quite common” for divorcing couples not to make full and frank disclosure of their assets.
He said: “By doing so, they are under the misguided belief that if they are not caught, they will not have to share or divide this asset with their former spouse.”
But this case shows how there can be very dire financial consequences if the courts draw an adverse inference against the person who tried to hide his assets.
Mr Cheong added: “It never pays to attempt to conceal, hide assets or refuse to give objective information that would lead to the accurate identification and valuation of the assets.”
- Theresa Tan is the senior social affairs correspondent at The Straits Times. She covers issues that affect families, youth and vulnerable groups.
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