After nearly three years behind bars and a five-year legal ordeal, former Wah!Banana actor Lev Panfilov walked out of court a free man when Singapore's Court of Appeal overturned his convictions for rape, sexual assault and molestation.
The decision, delivered on October 2, 2026, spared the 30-year-old Russian national — a Singapore permanent resident — an 11-and-a-half-year prison term and 12 strokes of the cane imposed in May 2025. The apex court found material inconsistencies in the complainant's evidence that created reasonable doubt. A gag order continues to protect the woman's identity.
Panfilov has always maintained the encounter was consensual. His "nightmare," as he called it, began in January 2021 after matching with a 30-year-old woman on Tinder and meeting her for a meal. Detained for questioning that year and charged that December, he watched his plans to move to New York for acting studies on a scholarship collapse. Clients at his recruiting job withdrew; public scrutiny mounted.
The ordeal's details read like a legal thriller. Twice he applied to leave Singapore to visit his father, who had aggressive brain cancer — leave initially denied, though he was later permitted to attend the funeral, after which his bail rose from S$80,000 to S$120,000. Later, amid concern for his 91-year-old grandfather, he attempted to exit Singapore on an undeclared second passport; stopped at the airport, he was remanded while the trial continued.
In May 2025 he was convicted and sent to Changi Prison's maximum-security A1 cluster, where he began adapting to a lengthy sentence even as he lodged his appeal. Released the same evening as the acquittal, Panfilov spoke of profound relief — and of feeling presumed guilty throughout. The case has reignited debate in Singapore about the presumption of innocence in sexual-assault cases, where public judgment often arrives years before the final verdict.
Acquittals in sexual-assault cases remain rare in Singapore, where conviction rates for such offences are high and appellate reversals rarer still. The Court of Appeal's finding — that material inconsistencies in the complainant's evidence created reasonable doubt — does not declare Panfilov innocent in any absolute sense; it holds that the prosecution failed to prove its case to the criminal standard. That distinction is often lost in public debate, where the case has become a proxy for larger arguments about belief, evidence and the presumption of innocence.
The five-year timeline is itself part of the story. Investigations and trials in complex sexual-assault cases routinely stretch for years, during which the accused lives under a cloud: employment dries up, travel is restricted, and, as Panfilov described it, the public presumes guilt. His detention on the second-passport episode — an attempt to visit an ailing grandfather that backfired spectacularly — added a separate layer of legal jeopardy to an already dire situation.
Wah!Banana, the comedy collective where Panfilov once acted, has continued without him, a reminder of how quickly the entertainment machine moves on. Whether the industry welcomes back a man acquitted after years in prison is an open question — and one the courtroom cannot answer.