Sentosa Cove bungalow forfeited as owner gets 12 months’ jail

A trail of 11 overseas transfers worth about S$17.6 million ended with Zhang Ruisheng receiving a 12-month jail sentence and giving up the bungalow at 69 Cove Drive, Sentosa, to the State.

Zhang, a 54-year-old Chinese national, pleaded guilty on 19 October 2026 to one count of possessing benefits of criminal conduct. The case matters to landed-home readers because the forfeited property may sound like a S$10 million transaction or redevelopment opportunity—but neither has been established.

How the money reached 69 Cove Drive

According to reporting based on court documents, the S$17.6 million arrived in Zhang’s newly opened CIMB account through 11 transfers between August and September 2020.

About S$10.4 million was subsequently put towards the purchase price and stamp duty for 69 Cove Drive between September and October that year. This figure combines property expenditure and tax; it is not a later valuation or achieved resale price.

The explanations supplied to the bank involved a purported Macau property sale and a loan agreement. The supporting documents were found to be forged, and Zhang admitted that he had not owned the Macau property or dealt with the two companies named in those documents.

Zhang agreed to forfeit both 69 Cove Drive and a Toyota Vellfire. Independent reporting described the bungalow as being worth about S$10 million, but no official valuation or completed sale supporting that round figure has been published in the available evidence.

The connection to Singapore’s S$3 billion case

Zhang Ruisheng is the older brother of Zhang Ruijin, one of the 10 people convicted in Singapore’s S$3 billion money-laundering case. Zhang Ruijin was sentenced to 15 months’ jail in 2024.

Zhang Ruijin’s wife, Lin Baoying, also received a 15-month sentence in 2024. The couple were directors of Golden Eagle Family Office, where Zhang Ruisheng was purportedly employed while holding a work pass.

Those family and employment links provide the case’s background, but the convictions should not be conflated. Zhang Ruisheng’s 12-month sentence arose from his own guilty plea to possessing criminal proceeds.

Forfeiture is not a bungalow sale

Forfeiture transfers the asset to the State as part of the criminal proceedings. It does not, by itself, tell us when the property will be offered for sale, how it will be marketed or what price a buyer might eventually pay.

That distinction is especially important here. The approximate S$10 million description is not a recorded transaction. Nor is the S$10.4 million expenditure a clean purchase-price comparison, because it included stamp duty.

There is currently no verified disposal notice for 69 Cove Drive in the supplied evidence. Previous dealings involving other forfeited Sentosa Cove properties do not establish what will happen to this address, so treating it as an imminent listing would be premature.

What a future landed buyer would still need to check

The court outcome does not settle the ordinary due-diligence questions that come with a landed property. No verified title extract, remaining lease, land area or address-specific planning approval was available for this report.

A prospective buyer would first need a current title search. Singapore Land Authority records can establish matters such as the registered ownership and interests affecting a property; these particulars should be checked rather than inferred from marketing descriptions or the forfeiture itself.

Rebuilding would require a separate planning assessment. Under the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s general route for erecting a new landed house, the resulting home must retain the same landed housing type, remain a single dwelling on the plot and comply with applicable planning requirements.

Those are broad rules, not confirmation of what may be built at 69 Cove Drive. Address-specific controls, plot conditions and the existing approval history would still need professional and official checks.

For now, the verified property event is narrow but significant: 69 Cove Drive has been forfeited to the State following its owner’s conviction. Its tenure details, redevelopment scope, disposal method and eventual market price remain unresolved.