Associate Director
Bethel Chan
With a penchant for solving complex and novel legal issues, Bethel focuses her practice on cross-border disputes and insolvencies.
Her keen legal mind has seen her litigate across a broad spectrum of cases, from financial investments and transactions, fraud and financial crime, to digital assets. Specifically, she has acted in matters involving complex financial products, money laundering, fraudulent financial schemes, concealed asset recoveries entailing manipulation of corporate and trust structures, cryptocurrency and digital tokens, initial coin offerings, and cross-border payment processing transactions.
On the restructuring and insolvency front, Bethel has prosecuted claw back actions in multi-jurisdictional insolvencies and acted as counsel in the restructuring of EHT REIT involving parallel proceedings in the US and Singapore. She also advised the liquidators of BSI Bank on matters arising from the fallout of the 1MDB scandal.
Bethel was a secondee with the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Payments Department from October 2021 to March 2022. She was also selected to the Supreme Court Young Amicus Curiae scheme in 2022, and the INSOL Future Leaders Programme in 2023.
Bethel obtained her Juris Doctor degree (summa cum laude) from the Singapore Management University, where she was awarded the Kwa Geok Choo Scholarship (postgraduate) and was active in international moots, representing the university at the Jessup Moot and the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot (Vienna).
Prior to joining private practice, she served as a Deputy Public Prosecutor with the Financial and Technology Crimes Division of the Attorney-General’s Chambers, and as a Justices’ Law Clerk with the Supreme Court of Singapore, during which time she also won the ECC-SAL International Mooting Competition.
Before taking law, Bethel graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English (magna cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as a news producer.
Bethel's Representative Experience
Acting for Bank JTrust (formerly Bank Century Indonesia) and JTrust Co Ltd in defending claims brought by a distressed debt investor arising from English-law governed bonds issued prior to the collapse of Bank Century Indonesia. The matter involved parallel proceedings in New York, Mauritius, and Japan.
Acted as counsel on behalf of the Eagle Hospitality REIT Group, a REIT listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, in proceedings brought before the Singapore Courts in support of Chapter 11 restructuring proceedings in the US.
Advised the liquidators of BSI Bank following upon the fallout of the 1MDB scandal, in particular in relation to investigations into alleged money laundering by purported associates of Jho Low.
Acted for the trustee-in-bankruptcy of the estate of Richard Pelletier in a multi-jurisdictional and multi-million dollar asset recovery action, successfully upholding a freezing injunction against assets located in Singapore. The case was the subject of a landmark judgment addressing novel issues of conflicts of law and jurisdiction.
Acted for an Argentinian company in asset-tracing and recovery proceedings arising out of a multi-million-dollar CEO fraud, the proceeds of which were laundered through underground remittance arrangements based in the People’s Republic of China. Separately, acted for a Hong Kong-based financial institution in a dispute of a similar nature.
Acted for a blockchain and cryptocurrency advisory company in a multi-jurisdictional dispute relating to the design and development of a blockchain-based marketplace for non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) and digital collectibles.
*The representative cases above include matters which our lawyers worked on in other firms prior to Setia Law LLC.
