Statutory claims against Standard Chartered, BSI Bank will be filed in ‘short order’
[SINGAPORE] The Singapore High Court has approved applications to wind up three British Virgin Islands-incorporated entities linked to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, the firms’ liquidators confirmed on Friday (May 15).
In a statement, the liquidators, Angela Barkhouse and Toni Shukla from Kroll Limited, said the winding-up orders will pave the way for them to file statutory claims against Standard Chartered Bank Singapore and BSI Bank’s Singapore operations.
“The Singapore court’s latest decision will allow the court-appointed liquidators to hold those who facilitated fraudulent acts against the companies fully to account,” they said.
“The statutory claim(s) will be pursued in addition to other ongoing claims brought against these banks, which includes claims for dishonest assistance, breach of the banks’ duties of reasonable skill and care, and/or breach of their banking mandate, in respect of the companies now entering liquidation in Singapore.”
They added that the statutory claims will be filed “in short order”.
The four entities – Alsen Chance Holdings, Brightstone Jewellery, Brazen Sky and Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners – were placed into liquidation in the British Virgin Islands between December 2021 and March 2024 for the purposes of investigating their alleged involvement in fraudulent transactions.
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Their foreign liquidations were granted recognition under Singapore’s cross-border insolvency framework between 2022 and 2024.
The winding-up applications were filed in November 2025 as a workaround to an earlier ruling by the Singapore court, which had found that Singapore’s Model Law on cross-border insolvency barred foreign representatives from bringing avoidance claims relating to transactions that predated its introduction.
By obtaining local winding-up orders, the liquidators sought to pursue those pre-2020 transactions through Singapore-appointed liquidators instead.
Barkhouse and Shukla said that the overall objective is to “recover assets from the individuals and institutions our investigations have identified as having culpability for the misappropriation of assets from the companies”.
They added that such assets are “ultimately traceable to funds which were originally meant to benefit the people of Malaysia but were siphoned off”.
The ruling follows a separate High Court decision in March that rejected bids by Standard Chartered Bank Singapore and BSI Bank to intervene in the winding-up proceedings.
Justice Aidan Xu found that neither bank had standing to participate, dismissing their arguments that they qualified as contingent creditors of the British Virgin Islands entities based on the possibility of future costs orders being made against the firms.
The Business Times has reached out to Standard Chartered Bank Singapore for comment.
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