Singapore loan sharks recruit foreign muscle

Jan 26, 2011, 10:47 GMT

Singapore - Illegal money-lending syndicates in Singapore were increasingly hiring foreign thugs from the region to extract repayments from borrowers, the city-state's police said Wednesday.

The imported heavies were favoured by criminals because they were harder for the authorities to track, as they 'are usually in Singapore for a short period of time and may not have a fixed place of abode,' police said.

Last year, 50 foreigners working for Singapore loan sharks were arrested compared to just 22 in 2009, an official crime report said.

Police said the number of illegal money-lending and harassment cases in 2010 fell by 10 per cent to 16,833, while the number of arrests over those crimes was up 56 per cent to 1,506.

Most of the debt collectors arrested were from Vietnam and Taiwan, with the rest coming from other Asian countries, a spokesman said.

Police warned the syndicates against thinking that 'they can circumvent the law by bringing in foreign nationals to commit crime on their behalf.'

The hired thugs usually pressure debtors by writing their names and telephone numbers on walls, splashing paint on their homes or threatening them physically.

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