Businessman Ng Yu Zhi, founder of Envy Asset Management and Envy Global Trading, is on trial in Singapore over an alleged nickel-trading fraud that drew about S$1.5 billion from 947 investors. Prosecutors say the nickel deals never happened and that hundreds of millions were channelled to Ng's personal accounts to fund a lavish lifestyle.
The scheme, as prosecutors describe it, ran from 2016 to 2021 and was built on a simple, attractive story. Investors were told Envy could buy physical nickel at a discount from Australian supplier Poseidon Nickel and resell it at a profit to buyers including BNP Paribas Commodity Futures and Raffemet. Returns averaging around 15 per cent over a short period were dangled in front of wealthy individuals, fund managers and wealth firms, and money poured in.
Investigators say the trades were fictitious. Forward contracts cited to investors did not exist, and BNP Paribas has been reported as having no trading relationship of the kind described. Instead of buying metal, prosecutors allege, Envy recycled money from new investors to pay earlier ones, the classic mechanics of a Ponzi-style scheme, while forging documents to keep the story credible.
The personal spending alleged in court is what turned a financial case into a tabloid sensation. Prosecutors say at least S$201 million, and by some accounts more than S$480 million in total, reached Ng's personal accounts. The money was linked in reporting to luxury cars including Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Bentley and Aston Martin models, expensive artwork, jewellery, property and even more than S$1 million spent on a single coveted car registration plate. Several cars were transferred to his wife and to other women named in court reporting.
Ng was arrested in February 2021 after a Commercial Affairs Department probe that began in late 2020, and his bail eventually rose to S$4 million with round-the-clock monitoring. He was declared bankrupt in 2022, his Clarke Quay restaurant Cicada closed, and other eateries he backed were put up for sale by liquidators. In late 2024 his High Court trial began on 42 charges including fraudulent trading, cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust and money laundering, among them an allegation that he cheated venture investor Finian Tan of S$19.2 million. He has pleaded not guilty and declined to testify, and a fresh charge later alleged he indemnified a bailor with S$1.5 million, which the Criminal Procedure Code treats as void.
The human cost surfaced in testimony that two investors had died directly or indirectly under pressure from the case, and that staff at Envysion Wealth Management, which had placed tens of millions with Envy, lost their jobs overnight when the scheme collapsed. Former Envysion chief executive Veronica Shim invested personally as well as through her firm and later fought a court battle simply to have a debt claim admitted against Ng's bankruptcy estate.
Liquidators and lawyers have warned that investors are unlikely to recover most of what they put in, because so much was spent, transferred or paid out to earlier participants. Whatever the verdict, the Envy case has become Singapore's defining modern investment-fraud story: a reminder that glossy philanthropy, fine dining investments and a plausible commodity story can coexist for years with trades that, prosecutors say, never existed at all.