Once a Jolly Hangman (22 page)

17

The High Society Drug Ring

It's Friday night. The rich and privileged are iced up dancing wildly to the thumping beat of techno music. They have popped a pill or two eased down with vintage champagne and they are having a whale of a time. It was very likely one of those Friday nights after a Friday morning when a hapless mule - one who possibly provided the cocaine they'd just stuck up their noses - had been dancing, too. But for him or her it was no fun. Their jerky moves were grotesque on the end of a rope. Every Friday at sunrise the hangman goes to work. No music can be heard. Only screams of terror or muffled sobs and a sickening thud. Or the hangman's hopeful refrain: 'I am sending you to a better place than this'. But 18 hours or so later, the revellers, like the majority of the population, would not know or care who had been hanged anyway. Changi Prison's execution chamber is a closely guarded secret. Little news of what goes on behind its grim walls ever gets out. These glamorous young things and their nattily-dressed partners are in a drug-hazed here-and-now world, bent on enjoying themselves as intensely as possible. As members of Singapore's so-called high society - often privileged and pampered sons and daughters of Singapore's newest batch of production-line tycoons or expensive foreign talent and entrepreneurs from Australia, Britain, the US or Germany - they are the ones who get photographed and written up for the glossies' celebrity news pages to be admired by their peers or worshipped or envied by the less fortunate. They see themselves as invincible and beyond the law. During the small hours when the nightspots around Boat Quay and Clarke Quay are closing they jum
p into limos to be whisked away
to join house parties where cocaine is just as plentiful. They snort it off the backs of their hands or stick 'loaded' rolled banknotes up their noses with total abandon.

The surprise round up began 7 October 2004. It was a lengthy investigation. Those arrested - 16 Singaporeans, seven foreigners, including two permanent residents - were from the upper classes, and included brokers, businessmen and executives, an award-winning French chef, a showbiz personality and a pretty television news reporter. They were known to zoom around town in flashy cars, ate at expensive restaurants and hang out at glitzy nightclubs and bars and along the Singapore River. Of the arrests that night, the most surprising was that of a former High Court judge's son, Dinesh Singh Bhatia, 35, a private equity investor. His father, Amarjeet Singh, a former judicial commissioner and also a senior counsel, served on the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the Balkans. Dinesh's mother, Dr Kanwaljit Soin, was a former Nominated MP and orthopaedic surgeon, and a director of the London-based Help Age International, a global network helping the disadvantaged elderly. Dinesh was charged with cocaine consumption, and was facing 10 years behind bars or fined S$20,000 or both. But funny things often seem to happen on the way to court houses in Singapore. Instead of getting ten years and a heavy fine, Bhatia, was jailed for only 12 months for consuming cocaine. His lawyer, a People's Action Party MP, K. Shanmugam, had told
the court that Bhatia was not an addict at all. He was given the drug by a friend but 'did not know that it was cocaine' although he had a 'fleeting suspicion' the substance could be illegal. 'He took it on impulse', said Shanmugam. An internet blogger wryly commented: 'I would not remotely suggest that it might have helped Bhatia's case that his father was a judge, and his mother a former Singapore Member of Parliament. Ignorance of the law is no defence!'

So should Bhatia, a sophisticate about town, have known he was sticking something illegal up his nose? On 7 April 2005, according to court records, Bhatia appealed against his 12-month sentence and asked for a heavy fine instead. Calling the previous sentence 'excessive', the appeal judge, V.K. Rajah, said that the district judge erred by not tailoring the sentence to fit the offender and failed to 'attach adequate weight and merit to all the relevant mitigating factors'. He said the trial
judge did not adequately consider the fact that Bhatias consumption was neither planned nor purchased. Justice Rajah then cut Bhatias sentence to eight months. On 7 July 2005, The Straits Times reported that Bhatia was 'now at home serving out his sentence wearing an electronic tag he cannot remove'. It did not say when this favourable treatment began.

Years earlier, when Michael Fay, the American student who was caned in Singapore for some paint-spraying vandalism, Bhatias father, a judicial commissioner and senior counsel at the time, supported the bloody, flesh-ripping thrashing, saying: 'You know, once you loosen up or the laws become lax, everything comes in. The floodgates are opened. It doesn't pay to mess around with the system'. That very week The New Paper reporter bravely wrote of those arrested: "Ihey live a lie. These are people on the move - young, urban and upwardly mobile professionals. At night they drive flashy cars and hit the expensive restaurants. This is the illicit cocaine party crowd right here in squeaky clean Singapore'. In one online chatroom, 'Sniff Snort', commented: 'Cocaine is nature's way of telling you that you are making too much money. Only someone with a brain the size of a pea wouldn't know the consequences of doing drugs in Singapore'. A veteran observer, Seah Chiang Nee, commented in his blog: 'Even as a liberal young journalist, I could agree with the reasons why Singapore and Malaysia had laws to hang drug traffickers. These countries are a stone's throw away from the Golden Triangle, one of the world's biggest heroin producers. If not stopped, the menace can write off hundreds of thousands of urban youth'. But during my meeting with Anandan he denied that Bhatia received special treatment because of his family connections. 'He was treated no differently than anyone else facing such charges', he said.

Briton Andrew Yeale, a top financial broker and a 10 year resident, who drove a Rolls Royce often with his Singaporean girlfriend, Penelope Pang Su-yin, 35, daughter of the organiser of the Miss Universe pageant, were next to appear in court. They too got off lightly with jail sentences amounting to no more than eight months with remission. Veale, was a broker with Structured Credit Desk dealing in derivatives and financial products, and the sort of people Singapore needs.

Next in the dock was Nigel Simmonds. Wearing a dark suit, the bald, bespectacled Briton kept his head bowed throughout. He was
accompanied in court by his brother and Japanese wife; Although Simmonds, 40, confessed to being a drug addict, his lawyers, Shashi Nathan and Peter Chean tried to distinguish their client from the rest of
the pack. He never took part in 'drug parties' allegedly organised by his supplier, Ben Laroussi, said Nathan. It was Laroussi, who originally faced the mandatory death penalty, who mysteriously managed to slip out of the country while on bail after his arrest. In fact, Nathan said, the Briton 'always made a conscious effort to stay away' from these functions. 'He did not know any of the other 13 suspects well'. As for his supplier, Laroussi, he knew him only as 'the Arab'. Nathan said he was worried the arrests of many high-profile personalities gave the impression that all of them took drugs at private parties. But Simmonds was a loner, he said, who took drugs in solitude. 'He is an addict but not a member of these drug parties. He was so ashamed of his addiction that he had to hide it from his own wife', he said. Nathan also submitted a psychiatric report by Dr Lim Yun Chin of Raffles Hospital documenting Simmonds's 'tumultuous childhood and youth' which hooked him on drugs since he was young. He grew up in Malaysia where his father, an army officer, was posted. Lim said in his report: 'It is not surprising that drugs and alcohol were the only way he knew how to cope'. The psychiatrist added that Simmonds had tried to use his talent and ability to lead a normal life but he kept meeting misfortunes which 'aggravated' his drug use. His wife lost a baby the previous year due to medical complications. Then his father died of stomach cancer a few months later. The economic downturn also made his job more stressful. 'He had no chance to escape from the scourge of addiction because of his rollercoaster emotional experience', wrote Lim. Simmonds started psychiatric and counselling sessions after he was arrested and attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings. District Judge EG. Remedios noted that the standard minimal sentence imposed on first-time drug offenders was 12 months. 'There are no circumstances in this case warranting a higher or lower sentence', said the judge.

Dutchman Petrus van Wanrooij, managing director of Aspen Oil Broking, was also caught in the same swoop and was jailed for 11 months for popping ecstasy pills. He was the ninth and, at 57, the oldest of the group picked up in the October 2004 bust. Wanrooij was arrested in his home during simultaneous raids all over the island. His excuse
was perhaps the most original, even amusing. He admitted buying two tablets for $60 to help correct an erectile dysfunction problem which he claimed Viagra could not fix. He bought the tablets from a man he knew as 'Tunis', later established to be Laroussi, one of the alleged leaders of the syndicate.

Another favoured member of the high society circle who dodged the noose was another kingpin, trafficker Marx Oh Wee Chee, a 31 year-old owner of Zero Events Concepts and part-time disc jockey. All this put him in a perfect marketing position as Laroussis sidekick. Oh was arrested at his posh Hyde Park Gate home in Seletar in the October Surprise round-up and in April 2005 he was jailed for six years and ordered to be given five strokes of the cane instead of 20 to 30 years' jail and 15 strokes. He was originally found with 21.67 grams of cocaine - a mandatory hanging offence. Lucky Oh was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal for this and another trafficking charge. He escaped the gallows, as extraordinary as this sounds, because Laroussi managed to escape from Singapore it meant the prosecution had lost a potential prosecution witness according to the spin. It all seemed so cosily convenient. To avoid any kind of internet criticism of favouritism for these chosen few, the authorities
explained at the time that if Laroussi was ever arrested and brought back to Singapore, Oh might still be charged with the capital offence and hanged. Oh's luck was still in at the time of his trial when he was given the minimum five years' jail and five strokes of the cane on one charge of trafficking in 0.56 grams of cannabis mixture. He was also given one year's jail for possessing 16.25 grams of cannabis, to be served consecutively and a year's jail for possessing cocaine and cannabis to run concurrently. The sentencing of Oh, who remains the only one convicted of trafficking, brought to a close the headline-grabbing saga of high society drug abuse to a relatively happy end as far as the authorities were concerned.

Apart from Laroussi, two other men also managed to flee Singapore while on bail: award-winning French chef Francois Mermilliod, to whom Nigel Simmonds gave a glowing write-up in the high-society magazine The Tatler, and Sri Lankan Jeremy Shanmugam, 40, a director of Oh's Zero Events Concepts. Mermilliod, 29, a chef at Flutes at the Fort restaurant at Fort Canning had been charged with possessing 0.5 gram of cocaine and Shanmugam was charged with possessing one

gram of cannabis and a replica pistol at his house at Hyde Park Gate, Seletar. They both skipped the country ahead of Laroussi. Out of 23 people nabbed, 14 were hauled to court. The others included rapper- actor Sheikh Haikel and television presenter Cheryl Fox both of whom were released alter their urine tests proved negative. Fox was said to be friends with Oh and was spotted by narcotics officers having a meal with him one day before the raids. Noor Ashikin Abdul Aziz, the creative director of an advertising agency, and shipping firm boss Andy Ng Kwang Thiam, 23, were all jailed for 11 months. Later, Anandan, who acted for five of the accused, solemnly told the government- controlled Straits Times: 'The courts have driven home the point that there's no group of people that will be spared or given special treatment. Whether you are rich or the elite, the law will come down hard on you', he said. 'If you are caught, you are dead meat'. Meanwhile, not having $280,000 to post bail and purchase fake passports to help them disappear or having powerful governments willing and able to fight for them, Vignes Mourthi, Yen May Woen, Amara Tochi, Nguyen Van Tuong, Shanmugam Murugesu and Nelson Malachy, among many others, were waiting for the hangman to call. Very soon they really would be dead meat!

And as so often happens in the top echelons of the murky world of drug trafficking, the syndicate bosses are rarely caught and punished. They are able to live in the security of their fortified mansions protected not only by armed bodyguards but huge bribes - or deals - with their pursuers. Guiga Lyes Ben Laroussi is a typical case. Even after his arrest on capital charges of trafficking, he managed to 'negotiate' with the Singapore authorities and have the charges drastically reduced so that his life would be spared in exchange for a 20-30 year prison term topped with 20 lashes of the rattan. And just as many such high ranked criminals are far too often favoured, Laroussi, a handsome 35 year-old Tunisian holding down an executive, high-paying position in Singapore, was allowed bail with a personal bond of $280,000 in cash - no doubt the proceeds of his nefarious activities! Although it was said he was ordered to surrender his passport as part of the arrangement he still managed to flee the country a few weeks later. How he did it is still a mystery in this tightly guarded, security conscious
island. And despite being hunted by Interpol for five years at the time of the publication of
this book, Laroussi, named as the kingpin in the infamous High Society Cocaine Circle, has not been seen since.

He had obviously planned his getaway the moment Singapore's dreaded CNB officers swooped on his luxury home in Seletar in October 2004. 'Laroussi was very lucky to get bail', said his lawyer, Subhus Anandan, 'but it was a bail-able offence in his case. He called me from Tunisia not long ago - that's where he said he was - and asked me if I could help his girlfriend [Mariana Abdullah], I told him, 'No, I don't think I can'. 'She's back in jail now for consumption, added Anandan. 'She has a very serious drug problem. Laroussi is quite safe where he is', he continued in this candid way. 'If a decision is made to extradite him, it will never succeed. Singapore will never be able to bring him back here. He's quite powerful in his own country, his family is well connected and the Tunisian police won't touch him. If they attempt to arrest and extradite him on behalf of Singapore, he and his family will tell them to go fly a kite! He probably travels on a false passport anyway, or has changed his name. Perhaps he's even changed his features by surgery!'