This law is finally been enacted.

As mentioned in August 2009, the Government was considering making it compulsory for conveyancing lawyers to have their stakeholder’s funds held by conveyancing accounts in banks.

Under the new measures, lawyers will no longer be allowed to receive and hold conveyancing money in their clients’ accounts. Instead, the money must be held in a conveyancing account in banks appointed by the Ministry of Law. Withdrawal or pay-out of such money will require two-party authorisation.

Violation of the rule will result in a fine of up to S$50,000, imprisonment of up to three months, or both.

Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has also set up a new electronic Payment Instruction (ePI) service to provide a better and more secure environment for lawyers to initiate pay-out instructions and counter-sign digitally, as well as for the appointed banks and SLA to securely process and retrieve instructions.

Such will prevent cases like these from happening. This would boost confidence to our locals as well as our foreign investors of our conveyancing process of procuring a property in Singapore.