SINGAPORE — Prosecutors on April 2 filed three fresh charges against Singaporean fugitive Charles Yeo Yao Hui, a former lawyer disbarred in 2025 over disciplinary issues.
Yeo, who fled Singapore in 2022 while out on bail, now faces two cheating charges and one charge of absconding, in addition to the three harassment charges and three counts of wounding the religious feeling of Christians filed in 2022.
The new charges were filed during a warrant of arrest review hearing.
The former lawyer, who was disbarred in 2025, had absconded in July 2022 while out on bail over allegations of criminal breach of trust and forgery.
He claimed at the time that he needed to travel to Vietnam to meet a witness linked to an unrelated case that he was handling at the time.
However, later the same month he declared on Instagram that he was seeking political asylum in Britain.
A warrant of arrest was issued in Singapore in August 2022 and the full bail amount of $15,000, with his mother acting as bailor, was forfeited the next month.
Following a request in October 2023 by Singapore for his extradition over an abetment of cheating allegation, Yeo was arrested in Britain on Nov 4, 2024.
Another warrant of arrest review hearing for Yeo has been fixed for Oct 1.
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Yeo, who was chairman of the Reform Party, was struck off the rolls on Nov 28, 2025, after the Law Society of Singapore brought five sets of disciplinary proceedings against him.
Three of the complaints were lodged by migrant workers after settlement for their workplace injuries were disbursed to a third party instead of the workers as a result of Yeo’s due diligence failures.
The fourth complaint involved at least 185 breaches of rules governing how lawyers handle money, arising out of Yeo’s mismanagement of clients’ funds and financial records.
The final charge related to misrepresentations he had made to the court while he was representing two death row inmates, as well as Instagram posts attacking the legal system.
The Court of Three Judges said Yeo, who was admitted to the Bar in August 2016, had shown himself to be “thoroughly unfit” in discharging his duties as a lawyer.
The extent of his breaches, including both the quantity of the complaints and quality of his misconduct, signified his “serious defects of character”, the court added in a written statement.
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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
