Director of car dealership to serve more than 9 years in jail after failing to pay $14m fine for evading duty, tax

A company director convicted of evading over $40 million in duties and taxes will serve jail time of more than nine years after he failed to pay the $14 million fine issued by the court.

Lee Clement, 44, pleaded guilty to eight charges for suppressing the declared values of 2,523 motor vehicles imported into Singapore between July 2016 and April 2022, and evading duty amounting to more than $5 million.

Another 15 charges of fraudulent evasion of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and incorrect declaration were taken into consideration during sentencing.

The Singaporean, who was the director of car dealership Crownston Line Pte Ltd, was also sentenced on Feb 25 to the maximum 12 months' jail for underpaying more than $39 million of the Additional Registration Fee (ARF) to the Land Transport Authority (LTA).

Singapore Customs and LTA said on Wednesday (March 11) that Lee had requested overseas suppliers to reduce the value of the imported vehicles in the invoices to cut costs.

For each import order, Crownston would make at least two payments — the first tallying with the reduced amount reflected in the invoice declared to Customs.

The remaining balance were paid to overseas suppliers through various remittance houses to avoid detection.

One of Lee's employees, Sim Yan Mi, assisted in preparing documents for submission to Customs and handled the remittance of the additional payments.

Sim admitted in court that Lee had told him that the remittance were excess payments as the actual values of the imported cars had been under-declared to Customs.

The 41-year-old Singaporean was convicted of abetting the fraudulent evasion of almost $2.6 million in duty on 1,120 imported motor vehicles, and was fined $6.8 million on April 8, 2025.

Sim is currently serving a jail term of 72 months as he had failed to pay the fine.

Lee was also convicted of under-declaring the values of vehicles at the point of registration with LTA.

He pleaded guilty to three amalgamated charges under the Road Traffic Act for providing incorrect information in relation to the value of 976 motor vehicles, with four similar amalgamated charges involving another 1,505 vehicles taken into consideration.

The court ordered Lee on Feb 25 to repay the outstanding ARF amount of more than $39 million to LTA.

[[nid:728609]]

lim.kewei@asiaone.com