Carlos Manuel De São Vicente v Public Prosecutor

Carlos Manuel De São Vicente, the applicant, had been employed by the Angolan state oil company Sonangol and became the majority shareholder of AAA Seguros, a leading insurer in the Angolan oil sector. In September 2020 he was taken into custody in Angola and charged with embezzlement, money laundering and tax fraud. The District Court of Luanda convicted him on 24 March 2022, sentenced him to nine years' imprisonment and a fine, and ordered compensation to the Angolan state. His appeal to the Court of Appeal of Luanda failed and a further appeal to the Supreme Court of Angola was pending. He described the Angolan case as a politically motivated prosecution. His Swiss bank account with Banque Syz was also partly frozen, and appeals over that freezing order and related mutual legal assistance proceedings were pending in Switzerland.

Some of the money moved into his personal accounts reached his Bank of Singapore account. On 19 February 2021 the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) seized that account, which held more than USD$558 million, along with accounts of his wife Irene and son Ivo. On 28 September 2022 he applied in Criminal Motion No 50 of 2022 under s 35(8)(b)(i) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 for the release of USD$4,900,591.27 to pay legal fees. He later cut the sum to S$2,635,865.55 and limited it to his personal legal costs in Singapore, Switzerland and Angola and for representations to international bodies, saying he had no other money to pay for access to justice.

1. Whether s 35(8)(b)(i) of the CPC requires necessity, exclusivity, reasonableness and fees already incurred, all shown cumulatively
2. Whether the release of the seized funds was necessary given other sources of money, including funds held by his family
3. Whether the Singapore legal fees were incurred exclusively for the applicant
4. Whether funds should be released for legal costs in the Swiss and Angolan proceedings and before international bodies

Applying the three-step approach to statutory interpretation in Tan Cheng Bock v Attorney-General [2017] 2 SLR 850, the court read s 35(8)(b)(i) as setting five conditions: necessity, exclusive use for legal fees and expenses of the applicant himself, reasonableness of both fees and expenses, liability for work already done, and proof of all of these together. Both fees and expenses must be connected with legal services. The purpose of the provision, drawn from the Minister's speech, was to temper the police power to freeze accounts and prevent undue hardship, which calls for a balance between the needs of the investigation and the prejudice to the person affected.

On necessity, the court applied closer scrutiny because the applicant had controlled more than a billion US dollars. It accepted that his Angolan assets, the frozen part of his Swiss account and Bermudan funds were out of reach. But on 12 June 2019 €18,005,762.19 had gone from his Swiss account to a Barclays account in London in his name, with no evidence that it was frozen; there was no documentation for his Portuguese accounts or freezing orders; and his denial of knowing some companies named in the Angolan forfeiture order sat uneasily with the Angolan findings. The court also held that sources available to an applicant need not be his own legal property. His family had received large transfers from him, his son Antonino held more than USD$10 million in an account that was not frozen, and nothing showed that the family would be unwilling to help. He had not tried that route.

On exclusivity, the Singapore law firm's invoices were addressed to the whole family, and part of the work was done for Irene and Ivo. Without evidence of how the bill was split, the natural inference was that the family was billed as a unit. Having found no necessity, the court did not assess reasonableness. The interests of justice pointed the same way: the Angolan courts had determined that he misappropriated state funds, part of which were traceable to the Singapore account, he had been slow to explain his sources of funds, and Irene and Ivo had delayed responding to the CAD for more than a year.

For the foreign proceedings, the same finding on alternative funding applied. The Swiss and Angolan appeals were still pending, and the courts there, which held ample frozen assets, were better placed to decide any release for those costs. The court added that s 35(8)(b)(i) can in principle cover legal services for proceedings outside Singapore.

The High Court dismissed the application. The court held that the applicant had not shown that release of the seized funds was necessary, because there was real doubt whether he had other accessible assets and he had not shown that funding from his family was unavailable. Denying him access to the funds would not cause undue hardship or injustice.