Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer
Home / People

Who is Ng Yu Zhi?

Ng Yu Zhi ?

Ng Yu Zhi is a Singaporean businessman known for being involved in one of the largest investment fraud cases in the country. He was the former director of two companies, Envy Global Trading and Envy Asset Management.

Brief Profile of Ng Yu Zhi:

  • Name: Ng Yu Zhi

  • Nationality: Singaporean

  • Occupation: Former businessman / investment director

  • Notable For: Major investment fraud scandal involving precious metals

  • Status (as of June 2024): Facing ongoing legal proceedings (case began in 2021)

The Case Involving Ng Yu Zhi

In 2021, Ng Yu Zhi was arrested and charged for orchestrating an investment scam estimated at over SGD 1.5 billion (around USD 1.1 billion). His scheme involved offering investors a supposedly legitimate business of precious metals trading, primarily copper.

Ng claimed that his companies were conducting arbitrage trades—buying copper at lower prices and selling it at higher prices to overseas buyers. Investors were promised fixed returns of around 15% every three months, an unusually high figure in the investment world.

However, investigations later revealed that most of these transactions never actually occurred. The operation was suspected to be a Ponzi scheme, where money from new investors was used to pay "returns" to earlier investors.

Lavish Lifestyle

While running this fraudulent scheme, Ng Yu Zhi lived an extremely lavish lifestyle:

  • Owned luxury cars (including Ferraris, Bentleys, Rolls-Royces)

  • Owned multi-million-dollar properties

  • Collected expensive art pieces (including works by famous artists like Marc Chagall)

  • Owned rare, high-end luxury watches

All of these assets were later seized by Singapore authorities once the scandal came to light.

Legal Proceedings

Ng Yu Zhi is facing dozens of charges, including:

  • Fraud

  • Embezzlement

  • Forgery

  • Violations of Singapore’s financial regulations

The case is still ongoing in Singapore’s courts, and if found guilty of all charges, Ng could face decades of imprisonment.

Impact of the Scandal

  • This became one of the largest investment scams in Singapore’s history.

  • Many wealthy individuals, including businessmen, professionals, and even major financial institutions, were among the victims.

  • The scandal shook the alternative investment industry in Singapore, prompting financial regulators (MAS) to tighten oversight on similar schemes.