SINGAPORE - While employed at Credit Suisse, a woman forged at least 112 letters to perform unauthorised transactions on her client’s accounts, acts that eventually cost the bank $14.35 million in compensation.

Soh Yuan-Yi, 50, was sentenced to 13 years’ jail on Jan 8, after she pled guilty to 30 charges, including forgery and transferring the benefits from criminal conduct.

Another 123 charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

Court documents stated that Soh became assistant vice-president of the Swiss bank in 2005, and was promoted to vice-president in 2011, working there until August 2013.

Her duties included recommending investment products to clients, carrying out instructions from her clients in relation to their bank accounts and establishing relationships with new or prospective clients.

Soh had access to the account information, bank statements and balances of her clients, who invested between $2 million and $20 million through Credit Suisse.

Between 2006 and 2013, Credit Suisse carried out transactions on its clients’ accounts by following instructions written on the bank’s instruction letters.

The instructions letters had to be signed by the client for the bank to execute the instructions, and could be submitted through Credit Suisse’s relationship managers or their assistants.

In the span of seven years, Soh used at least 112 forged instruction letters to perform unauthorised transactions on 22 Credit Suisse accounts belonging to 15 of her clients.

These were largely unauthorised withdrawals made to non-Credit Suisse accounts under her control or inter-client transfers to hide the unauthorised withdrawals and losses in her clients’ accounts.

Soh did this by forging her client’s signatures, and writing false reasons for the transactions so that the bank’s back office would process them.

She made the un...