When Singaporean police stormed a string of luxury residences across the city-state on August 15, 2023, few could have predicted just how far the ripples would spread. The raids-part of what would become Singapore’s largest-ever money laundering investigation-uncovered billions of dollars in mysterious wealth linked to cyber scams, illegal gambling networks, and opaque offshore structures. Yet as investigators pieced together the complex web of transactions, another chapter of the saga was quietly unfolding thousands of kilometers away in London.

Two men associated with the Singapore probe-Su Binghai and Xu Haika-spent more than £40 million ($51 million) buying up prime London real estate during the same months that Singaporean authorities moved in. One of them, in a twist that might have seemed absurd even in a crime thriller, also splashed out nearly £12.4 million ($16 million) on three complete dinosaur skeletons.

This remarkable tangle of assets-luxury apartments, rare Chinese artifacts, and prehistoric fossils-has now been seized by the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA), which says the purchases may be linked to international money laundering operations. The case has drawn renewed attention to how global real estate markets and permissive offshore regimes continue to serve as conduits for suspicious funds, even as regulators vow to crack down on illicit finance.

In a statement, the NCA revealed that 37-year-old Su Binghai, a Chinese national residing in the United Kingdom, agreed to forfeit an eclectic trove of assets that included the dinosaur skeletons-an Allosaurus mother-and-child pair and a Stegosaurus-as well as 11 pieces of Chinese artwork valued at more than $500,000.

Authorities said Su had no criminal conviction in the UK, but that he had been “linked to a money laundering........

© Blitz