Australian businessman Ranjit Thambyrajah languishes in Vietnam jail after string of failed loan deals

A high-flying Australian businessman has been languishing in a Ho Chi Minh City jail for two months, accused of swindling a struggling Vietnamese petrol trading company.

Ranjit Thambyrajah, 65, has spent decades building a business promising to connect borrowers everywhere from New York to Kuala Lumpur with lenders in the high-stakes world of global finance.

Over the years the business, Acuity Funding, has been involved in legal stoushes over the fees it charges, including an allegation of fraud made against it in a civil lawsuit in American courts.

But in October the stakes escalated dramatically when Vietnam's powerful and politically connected Ministry of Public Safety imprisoned Mr Thambyrajah without charge after accusing him of swindling companies there.

The ministry alleges Mr Thambyrajah made false claims to be able to procure billions of dollars in loans for companies in Vietnam and has placed him in "temporary detention" while it investigates.

He faces decades behind bars in Vietnam if eventually charged and convicted of embezzlement.

Sydney lawyer Christopher Farah of Farahs Legal represents Mr Thambyrajah's company Berhero, which trades as Acuity Funding.

Mr Farah told the ABC: "Mr Thambyrajah has not had any access to his family or his legal representatives in Vietnam since being detained."

"We have no visibility on when that situation may change," he added.

Asked about Mr Thambyrajah, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was "providing consular assistance to an Australian detained in Vietnam".

"Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment," the spokesperson said.

Loan sizes grow as Acuity expands

According to his biography on Acuity Finance's website, Mr Thambyrajah started in finance at the Commonwealth Bank in 1979 but soon realised he was "born to be self-employed".

He became a property investor, then moved into running nursing homes and property finance.

He is a co-founder of mortgage aggregator Vow Financial, which was sold to entrepreneur Mark Bouris's Yellow Brick Road group in 2014.

"Acuity Funding was founded by Ranjit in the mid-1990s to help fellow business owners and property developers with their finance needs," the online bio states.

Acuity charges fees in return for arranging loans that over the years have become ever larger in size.

The fees can also be large and, in cases reviewed by the ABC, Acuity has claimed they are payable whether or not the loan is actually delivered — a recipe for conflict that has repeatedly spilled over into the courts.

In 2013, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal ordered Acuity to repay $11,500 in brokerage fees paid by a man who had applied for a loan to refinance his debt to the ANZ but never received any money.

By 2023, the numbers were orders of magnitude bigger.

The NSW Supreme Court rejected Acuity's claim to $1.2 million in fees and interest charged to finance a $13.5 million property development loan that was also never provided.

In legal disputes underway over fees for loans that have not been provided, the numbers are bigger again.

At stake in a NSW Supreme Court stoush between Acuity and a group of Malaysian property developers, which includes the estate of the country's former army commander Zaini bin Mohd Said, is $US6.55 million ($9.88 million) in fees and interest on a loan of $US210 million.

In an arbitration proceeding in Singapore with New York property developer Roe Corporation, Acuity seeks a total of $US11.2 million on a loan size of $US280 million.

And in the Vietnamese case that has Mr Thambyrajah held in jail, Acuity is alleged to have reaped $US4.9 million in fees after promising to deliver loans, including one of hundreds of millions of dollars, to Nam Song Hau Trading Investing Petroleum (NSH Petro) where he was chief executive.

Malaysian property deal ends up in NSW Supreme Court

All three cases involve Acuity's dealings with Australian financier Lankan Bal, who Mr Thambyrajah has known for more than 20 years.

Mr Bal was declared bankrupt by the federal Magistrates Court in 2007 after failing to pay $1.78 million he owed to mortgage fund operator Grenfell Securities.

Details of his involvement in Acuity's dispute with the Malaysian property development group can be revealed after the ABC won a two-month battle for access to the file with the NSW Supreme Court.

In an affidavit filed with the court, Mr Thambyrajah said he and Mr Bal "have done business together since about the early 2000s and we met regularly in a professional capacity".

He said Mr Bal would regularly talk about work he was doing with Brown & Company, "one of the largest companies in Sri Lanka", including "working on a funding structure to support the repatriation of the Port City Colombo from China back to Sri Lanka".

Mr Bal also allegedly told him of his involvement in ventures including the Cayman-Island-registered Elite Global Equity Fund, UK group Elite Crown Diamond, and something called Global Consortium Corporation Royal Holdings.

Another of Mr Bal's ventures was investing in a power project in Africa where he said he lost "a great deal of money" in a banking transaction but subsequently recovered it, according to Mr Thambyrajah's affidavit.

Mr Thambyrajah said Mr Bal's Singaporean company, Global Wise Investments, was one of three financiers he approached to fund the Malaysian development — a hotel, shopping mall and apartment complex in Kuala Lumpur.

He said in July 2019 Mr Bal sent him an email offering to fund the project.

But, according to Mr Bal, Global Wise Investments was not to be the ultimate source of the money.

In his affidavit Mr Bal said he in turn approached potential funders, including a client in Ireland, Dharmendra Ojha, who according to a bank statement tendered to the court had hundreds of millions in the bank — although hundreds of millions of what is not clear, as the statement does not show the currency of the account.

Mr Ojha did not respond to the ABC's request for comment.

Mr Bal said he also approached one of his business partners, American Don Nissanka, and Protocol Capital, an investment company controlled by Qatar's ruling al-Thani family.

The Malaysians allege Acuity misled and deceived them by claiming it could raise the money and that, as a result, they should not have to pay the company anything.

They claim they may also have a similar claim against Global Wise and, in legal correspondence filed with the court, have questioned whether it was a genuine lender.

The case continues.

Legal dispute in Singapore and the US

Global Wise's bona fides were also questioned in a lawsuit filed against Acuity by New York property developer Buhm Jung Roe and his Roe Corporation in the US Federal Court system in February.

Roe Corporation asked the court to stop arbitration proceedings Acuity brought against it in Singapore and declare the loan agreement invalid due to fraud.

In a petition filed with the court, Roe Corporation claimed Acuity ran a "fraudulent loan scheme" to reap fat fees without providing any funding.

"This is a fraudulent scheme that Acuity has repeated in multiple instances, evidenced by litigation in multiple jurisdictions," Roe alleged.

It alleged Acuity struck the deal with the "elderly and infirm" Mr Roe "with full knowledge that they would not be able to perform, and that Acuity has executed the same fraudulent scheme with respect to numerous other prospective borrowers with the same effect of no legitimate funding being secured for any parties involved".

Roe Corporation hired accounting and consultancy firm Grant Thornton to investigate Acuity, Global Wise and Mr Bal in a task dubbed "Project Rigel".

In its report, filed with the court, Grant Thornton said former directors of Global Wise were convicted in Singapore of breaching their duties as directors of a different company which received $US2.87 million in proceeds from email scams.

In July the court denied Roe Corporation's request to quash the arbitration in Singapore.

Vietnam loan deal lands Mr Thambyrajah behind bars

According to the Grant Thornton report, Acuity's activities in Vietnam included agreeing to arrange a $US6.4 billion loan to fund green projects in 2023, raising $US450 million to build two cemeteries, and agreeing to arrange $US720 million in loans to NSH Petro last year to help it settle its debts, pay its taxes and fund new projects.

Mr Thambyrajah was also appointed CEO of NSH Petro.

NSH Petro was in distress — it owed a lot of money, had cash flow problems, and last year the State Securities Commission of Vietnam found that four people, including the son of its chairman, had manipulated its share price between February 2021 and May 2022.

The announcement of the funding deal put a rocket under NSH Petro's share price.

But the company and the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Safety now allege Mr Thambyrajah failed to deliver on Acuity's promises.

In an October 15 statement filed with the Ho Chi Minh City exchange, the Ministry of Public Safety said it had detained Mr Thambyrajah, accusing him of falsely claiming Acuity could provide hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to Vietnamese companies and misappropriating $US4.99 million.

On October 20, NSH Petro told the exchange it had fired Mr Thambyrajah for "providing false information" about the first tranche of the loan Acuity was supposed to provide the company — $US103 million earmarked "for tax payment purposes".

Mr Bal told the ABC that Global Wise agreed to fund the NSH Petro loans — subject to conditions.

"Yeah, we were funding, but we've given conditional approval for that," he said.

"They [NSH Petro] were supposed to bring in equity but they could never pass the terms and conditions."

He said NSH Petro paid Acuity fees for the loan.

"That's to Ranjit and it's Ranjit's fees," Mr Bal said.

"We had nothing to do with that and we never received any money."

Mr Bal told the ABC his was a legitimate finance business and when loans were not made it was because the would-be borrower did not meet its obligations.

"It's regular stuff," he said.

"It's just normal stuff that happens for projects."