Former Standard Chartered bankers jailed over HK$28m Africa investment scam

Pair sentenced to three years at a Hong Kong court after ICAC probe finds they helped syndicate use fake bank documents to dupe 21 Japanese investors

Two former relationship managers at Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong have been jailed for three years for swindling HK$28 million (US$3.6 million) from 21 Japanese investors who believed their money would fund development projects in Africa.

The District Court on Thursday sentenced Woo Man-ho and Chan Tak-ching on a total of four counts of conspiracy to defraud arising from a transnational investment scam between January 2015 and September 2016.

The defendants, both 39, had earlier pleaded guilty to making false representations about the financial capacity of a Hong Kong-based company at the behest of four foreign nationals who are still at large.

An investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) revealed that ADF Capital Limited had been using investors’ money to repay earlier investors, similar to a Ponzi scheme, before the High Court ordered the company to wind up in 2017.

Woo and Chan issued four bogus corporate refund promissory notes purporting that Standard Chartered Bank had agreed to guarantee a combined return of US$7.2 million for investors pouring their money into ADF, an acronym for African Development Funding.

As a result, 21 Japanese investors were deceived into making investments totalling 405.5 million yen, equivalent to about HK$28 million at the time. One victim lost 171 million yen, which was roughly HK$12 million.