I am told by my seniors who know both brothers, that Cheng Yew is smarter than Cheng Han.
Perhaps too smart, hence he probably thought he could run away with stealing clients' money to gamble.
On April 18th, Singapore lawyer Tan Cheng Yew, who had been on the run for six years until his 2009 arrest in Germany, was jailed for nine years for criminal breach of trust and cheating involving a total of $4.8 million.
Tan comes from a family of lawyers—his older brother Professor Tan Cheng Han is the dean of the law faculty at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a Senior Counsel, while is father, Tan Hock Kim, is a retired lawyer.
In February 2003, Tan fled Singapore for Perth, Australia. There, he stayed in his family’s house as well as hotels, and sent a text message to his parents in Singapore to say he was all right. Initially, he did not contact his family regularly as they ‘didn’t take what I had done… too well’, he said in court earlier this year.
Later that year he traveled to the U.S. using a fake passport and an assumed name—another crime. Passport and visa fraud are felonies in the US. Since Tan Cheng Yew’s forgery had other criminal links, the U.S. penalty is 15 years incarceration.
Tan Cheng Yew found employment in the U.S. as legal counsel in multinational companies—another crime as he was a fugitive and not licensed in the U.S. He flew regularly to Munich, Germany, for similar work and meetings.
Tan was arrested at Munich airport on June 2, 2009 and held in remand until his extradition to Singapore in October of that year.
The court record shows that Tan Cheng Yew was in touch with his family while wanted by the authorities. This means that those family members he contacted were “accessories after the fact,” if they did not report the incident to the authorities. Is brother Tan Cheng Han an “accessory after the fact?”
Our investigation shows that Tan Cheng Yew’s father, Tan Hock Kim, is a resident of Perth, Australia, hence the family house in Perth.
Since Tan Cheng Yew fled to Perth, and stayed in his family’s house in Perth, was his father there at the time? Did his father know that Tan Cheng Yew was staying at the family home in Perth? If so, his father, Tan Hock Kim, is certainly an “accessory after the fact.”
Why were Tan Cheng Yew’s brother and father not investigated by Singapore for their potential crimes? Would it be too embarrassing for Singapore to have a Senior Counsel and Dean of the NUS law faculty investigated for such a matter?
more here:
http://johnharding.com/2011/04/the-crimes-of-singapore-lawyer-tan-cheng-yew-and-family/