Song Fanrong, 49-years-old, pleaded guilty to one charge of breaching the Residential Property Act and was sentenced to 2 weeks imprisonment on 13 January.
She had bought landed properties under her name for three Chinese nationals, despite being fully aware that foreigners were not eligible to buy the properties.
Under the Residential Property Act, Singapore citizens are forbidden from buying residential properties for foreigners.
Two other charges were considered during her sentencing.
What happened?
Son had acted as a nominee for three men from China between September and November 2014, to buy semi-detached houses at a freehold cluster housing estate in Belgravia Villas.
She was the purchaser of the properties in name, but the money came from the three Chinese nationals: Wang Chen, Liu Guohui and Chen Xiaopu.
Song is a naturalised citizen and used to be an owner of a pre-school, and she is also an undischarged bankrupt.
The foreigners were required to get approval from the government to buy the properties, under the law.
Song had recommended the estate to Wang after learning that he was intending to immigrate to Signapore but told him that he would not be eligible to buy the property under his own name.
She then offered to buy the property for him and transfer the ownership to him once he had gotten his Singapore citizenship.
Wang accepted the offer and signed an agreement with her stating that she was just a trustee and was buying the home for him.
He then transferred $1.8 million to her bank account in China, which she then used to pay the developer as part of the payment for the home, which was worth $3.48 million.
However, the sale and purchase agreements were then defaulted when the three Chinese nationals stopped making payments.
