Man fined S$560,000 for evading duty on nearly 30,000 beer bottles

A 47-year-old Chinese national who masterminded a scheme to evade duty and Goods and Services Tax on imported beer has been fined S$560,000, Singapore Customs said.

Han Xiaoyang pleaded guilty to seven charges involving the evasion of about S$60,127 in duty on 28,236 bottles of beer. He did not pay the fine and will serve 164 days in jail by default. The court also considered 15 other charges, including four further duty-evasion charges and 11 charges involving GST.

Han's accomplice, 29-year-old Chinese national Tong Baobao, was sentenced on May 4. Tong, who worked as general manager of Wan Changya International, pleaded guilty to three charges and received a S$322,000 fine. He also failed to pay and served 80 days in default. Seven additional charges were taken into consideration.

Singapore Customs officers conducted an operation on Nov. 19, 2025, at an industrial building on Tagore Lane. They found 4,044 bottles of duty-unpaid beer in a consignment and arrested Tong when he arrived. Follow-up searches uncovered another 31,016 bottles.

Customs said Han arranged to import the beer from China under false declarations describing it as food or industrial machinery. Tong arranged storage in company warehouses and storage units before deliveries to customers in Singapore. Singapore law allows fines of up to 20 times the evaded duty for people convicted of buying, selling, transporting, delivering, storing, possessing or dealing in duty-unpaid liquor.

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Investigations revealed that Han had conceived and orchestrated a scheme to import duty-unpaid beer from China into Singapore through false declarations.