British International Monetary Fund civil suit in Singapore.

HE SAID he was an experienced businessman and a Christian. What he failed to mention was that he had run a string of failed companies and had once been jailed nine years for fraud.

When Mr Michael Ng Fook Khau asked Ms Chan Pui Woo to take part in an investment scheme that could help fund her Christian charity work, she agreed. But the promised returns never materialised.

Now Mr Ng, 70, has been ordered by the High Court to pay Ms Chan $18 million in damages for failing to keep to his side of the deal.

The payout is one of the largest ever handed out by a court registrar in a civil suit in Singapore.

Mr Ng, a former police inspector, was introduced to Ms Chan, a lawyer in her 40s, by a colleague of hers in 2002. He told her he had $64 million in a bank in Britain, which could be released only if a tax was a paid to what he called the 'British International Monetary Fund'.

Mr Ng, who also claimed to be a former director of the Swiss-Euro Credit Bank, said that if she gave him $816,336, he would guarantee her a return of $1.675 million in two weeks once the tax was paid and the money released.