A Singapore court has approved the extradition of Ge Zhi to the United States over his alleged role in a global insider trading ring, after a drawn-out committal process the judge blamed squarely on Ge's own delaying tactics.
US authorities allege that Ge moved a share of his trading profits through an individual identified as CC-10. In March 2019, CC-10 and Ge discussed Ge kicking back US$40,000 in trading profits, coded in messages as '40 kg of meat.' Another co-conspirator, identified as CW-1, admitted to being instructed by Ge and an associate to wire US$300,000 of his proceeds to a Hong Kong bank account held in the name of a person identified as Individual 7. When CW-1 expressed concern that the transfer would look suspicious, Ge instructed him to tell the bank that the money was a payment to an antique watch dealer that only accepted cash. Ge even purportedly had a box sent from Individual 7's Hong Kong address to CW-1, with an image of the shipping label used to support the transfer.
The court process took more than two years to conclude. Three sets of hearing dates, in May 2025, August 2025 and March 2026, were cancelled because of last-minute applications brought by Ge and his then-lawyers. In August 2025, the dates were vacated after Ge was observed behaving erratically, with his lawyer at the time suggesting he could be suffering a relapse of bipolar disorder. But in October 2025, a report from the Institute of Mental Health found no evidence that Ge suffered from any active mental disorder, describing him as 'clearly of sound mind' and concluding that his behaviour could be attributed to a lack of willingness to cooperate with court proceedings.
The committal hearing eventually began on August 20, 2026, with Ge repeatedly asking for more time before taking the stand. District Judge Cheng found that 'the inevitable conclusion was that the delays to the proceedings were attributable solely and directly to Mr. Ge's own applications,' and approved the extradition request. The case is a rare instance of Singapore agreeing to hand over a resident to face US securities fraud charges, and it underscores the reach of American insider trading enforcement into Asia's financial centres. The coded language in the alleged conspiracy has drawn particular attention. Referring to US$40,000 in kickbacks as '40 kg of meat' and disguising a US$300,000 wire as payment to a cash-only antique watch dealer, complete with a shipped box and a photographed shipping label to back up the story, suggests a deliberate effort to create paper trails for illicit transfers. Prosecutors will argue these were not the actions of a peripheral player but of someone embedded in the mechanics of the ring. For Singapore's financial community, the extradition is a reminder that the city-state's cooperation with US law enforcement extends well beyond tax matters into securities enforcement. Ge now faces the prospect of trial in the United States, where insider trading sentences can run to decades, a far harsher regime than anything he would have faced at home.