SINGAPORE, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Singapore Police's Commercial Affairs Department announced that it confiscated 164.5 million Singapore dollars (121.1 million U.S. dollars) of assets from foreign criminal proceedings in 2016, the Straits Times reported on Tuesday.
The amount was around five times as much as that for the previous year, which was 33.6 million dollars, due to increased surveillance, regulatory action and international cooperation with foreign law enforcement.
The authority said the money was seized from foreign predicate offences, which are crimes that took place overseas but where funds were passed through Singapore, and include crimes such as money laundering and financing of terrorists or terrorist groups.
It said the joint investigations into money laundering offences increased from five to 13 cases in the year of 2015 and 2016.