SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is considering various proposals on how to best compensate scam victims, said Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling on Friday (Feb 28).
She was responding to a supplementary question from Member of Parliament Gerald Giam (WP-Aljunied) about whether the government has considered establishing a scam victim restitution fund financed by the confiscated proceeds from recent money laundering cases.
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said on Feb 26 that assets surrendered to the state as part of the S$3 billion (US$2.2 billion) money laundering case are progressively being liquidated and returned to government coffers.
A total of 54 properties, 33 vehicles and 11 country club memberships were liquidated as of December 2024, and proceeds from the liquidation of non-cash assets would be paid into the government’s consolidated fund, he had said in parliament.
Setting up a consolidated fund for victims to recover the money they lost poses operational challenges, said Ms Sun on Friday.
For example, the authorities cannot ascertain that all the money recovered by the Anti-Scam Centre all come from scams, she added.
The syndicates that run these scams often operate other crime business lines as well, including illegal moneylending, said Ms Sun.
“There could be other proceeds that pertain to other forms of crime, and therefore there are other victims who may also similarly feel that they have a claim to those proceeds,” she said.
Tracking whether a dollar that was recovered is the same dollar lost by a victim is also difficult because of the comingling of funds, said Ms Sun.
Especially in cases where cryptocurrency is involved, it is often very difficult to ascertain which victim that dollar was scammed from, she noted.
As a result, with a consolidated restitution fund, it would be difficult to tell which victim has a right to the money that was recovered, said the minister of state.
The money recovered from scams are a fraction of the amount lost to scams, Ms Sun stressed.
At least S$1.1 billion (US$822 million) was lost to scams in 2024, and the Singapore Police Force managed to recover more than S$182 million of scam losses in 2024, making the net loss about S$930 million.
“There are going to be far more claimants for the monies than there are actually proceeds, in the monies that are recovered,” said Ms Sun.
Even if victims can recover some of their funds, it would be a “tiny fraction” of what they lost in the first place, she added.