HER life unravelled in two short years. From running a successful company with branches in Thailand and Malaysia, Madam Nancy Tan, 43, became a bankrupt.
And her road to ruin came from a triple whammy.
First, her business in Thailand ran into trouble in 2006 - and she borrowed heavily to bail it out.
Then, she claimed, an employee she entrusted to repay the loans failed to do so and she was declared a bankrupt.
Finally, when she sold her condominium unit to pay her debts, her lawyer ran away with her money.
Adding to her business woes were personal tragedies. Her husband, bedridden since 1998, died last year, followed by her mother this year.
Madam Tan also has a 17-year-old son who is mildly intellectually-disabled.
The widow, who also has two daughters aged 15 and 13, is at her wits' end. Her appeals to the Insolvency and Public Trustee's Office (IPTO) to be discharged from bankruptcy have failed so far.
Madam Tan told The New Paper: 'To keep my business going, I had to give up my position as director of the company I founded to an outsider.
'I'm now just a manager in my own company, drawing a salary of $3,000.'
It is illegal for bankrupts under the Companies Act to head or manage a company.
HIGH INCOME
Before her bankruptcy, as founder of freight forwarding company Chapman Container Lines, Madam Tan said she could take home more than three times what she earns now.
She started the company with her husband in the 1980s and, over the years, developed branches in Malaysia and Thailand.
But her troubles started in June 2006 when her Bangkok branch ran into financial difficulties.
She borrowed $150,000 from a Singapore bank and another $50,000 from a Singapore finance company.
Madam Tan, who was then living in Bangkok, claimed she relied on an employee in Singapore to repay her monthly instalments, and did not monitor the payments.
In March last year, the bank informed her that she had not been repaying her loans and would be declared bankrupt.
It was only then that she found out her company in Singapore had also run into debt, and the employee had stopped repaying her bank loans since December 2006, she said.
She still owed the bank about $132,000 and the finance company about $40,000.
A spokesman for the Official Assignee (OA) confirmed that Madam Tan was made bankrupt on 30 March last year.
Two months later, she shut down the Bangkok branch and returned to Singapore.
Madam Tan said: 'I returned to find that the Singapore branch owed various clients more than $100,000.'
She decided to sell her home in a condominium along Lentor Loop near Yio Chu Kang, which she had bought three years ago, to pay off her debts.
A friend recommended lawyer Zulkifli Amin, then one of three partners at law firm Sadique Marican and ZM Amin, to handle the transaction.
In September last year, she sold her unit for $740,000.
After paying her outstanding housing loan, she was left with about $205,000.
Within the same month, Madam Tan's husband died. He was 49.
Bedridden with a brain tumour since 1998, he had been living at St Joseph's Home, a nursing home and hospice.
Madam Tan said: 'My business was in trouble. I was a bankrupt, and my husband was gone. I felt like my head was about to explode.'
After selling her home, she lived in a rented five-room flat with her children and a friend. She needed a maid to take care of her disabled son while she is at work.
Zulkifli was supposed to remit the $205,000 to the OA's office.
Last September, she called him to ask if he had forwarded the cheque, and was told not to worry. She had never met him.
The cheque bounced after it was forwarded to the OA's office last November.
Just days earlier, news broke that Zulkifli had gone missing with some of his clients' money. The lawyer of seven years had absconded with an estimated $6 million.
But it wasn't until a week later that Madam Tan got the news through a phone call from the OA's office.
She said: 'I didn't follow the news, so I wasn't aware. I was stunned.
'I had pinned all my hopes on discharging myself with that money that I had trusted him with.'
Last December, she met IPTO officers to discuss her case, and was told that they would look into it.
Since then, she has been e-mailing the OA's office to appeal, but was told she could not be discharged as a bankrupt.
In June this year, she approached Jurong GRC's Member of Parliament Lim Boon Heng for help.
Soon after, she received a letter from the OA's office that a police report against Zulkifli had been lodged, and the Singapore Law Society had been informed.
The letter, dated 27 Jun, stated: 'We understand that this is an unfortunate event and the OA is currently looking into possible ways to assist you in recovering the sale proceeds.'
Madam Tan consulted a lawyer, but was told that getting her money back could be a long and expensive affair.
In April, Madam Tan's mother died. The 61-year-old woman had willed her estate to be divided among her four children, of which $9,500 went to Madam Tan, the eldest.
But she was not allowed to use the money as the bank accounts of bankrupts are frozen and can only be accessed with the OA's permission.
The OA's office has sent her several reminders to submit her statement of affairs - financial details and history - but she has yet to do so.
She is indignant that she has to fork out another $200,000 to discharge herself.
She said: 'I've already lost more than $200,000 for nothing. Why do I need to submit my financial details and pay another $200,000?'
Bankrupts who fail to file their statement of affairs can be jailed for up to two years, or fined up to $10,000, or both.
Madam Tan has since used her Central Provident Fund savings to buy a three-room flat in Jurong East, where she is now living.
She said: 'Previously, I could take the kids on yearly holidays, but now that's impossible. My children sometimes tell me their friends make fun of them because I'm a bankrupt. I feel I've let them down.'
This article was first published in The New Paper on Aug 14, 2008.
