SINGAPORE: How to Catch a Millionaire

Out of the jungle 30 miles from Singapore one morning last week stumbled a tired, filthy, quaking figure. Inquisitive Singapore detectives found Rubber Magnate Eng Hong Soon singularly unhelpful. By following the underworld rule of silence and paying out $20,000 ransom, Eng managed to emerge alive from the hands of one of the kidnaping gangs that have lately been making life miserable for Singapore's 100-odd Chinese millionaires.

In the past ten months, kidnapers have grabbed six millionaires and three wealthy children. One eleven-year-old boy is still missing after seven months, and a merchant named Koh Eng Pang bled to death in the front seat of his car after trying to fight off a kidnaper's ambush. More typical of the pattern was the case of Ong Cheng Siang, the chairman of a bus company, who disappeared last April while on the way home in his Mercedes-Benz. From the kidnapers the family got his car keys and a terse set of instructions. After paying a record $170,000 ransom, they got Ong back alive as promised. He was dumped out, hands bound and eyes taped, on a lonely country road.

So boldly do the Singapore kidnapers strike that the millionaires have given up favorite haunts: no more nights at the Tanjong Rhu club over cool drinks and mah-jongg, no more rides home on a quiet road where moonlight filters through acacia and tulip trees. To protect themselves, some millionaires, like the movie-mogul Shaw brothers, reportedly pay regular tribute to the underworld. Others have bought barbed wire and snarling watchdogs. A few take the precaution of calling ahead to their destination whenever they go out, and if they fail to arrive on time, an alarm is sounded.

Whatever happens, the millionaires do not call the cops. Last April, after Biscuit King Lee Gee Chong was snatched from his limousine only 100 yards from his home, the family called in the police and then missed the rendezvous with the gang; Lee's wire-trussed body turned up a few days later in a Chinese cemetery. Since then, probably twice as many kidnapings have actually taken place as have been reported.

Last week, though still too leary to take up a police offer of bodyguards, the millionaires joined in a campaign to make kidnaping on the island punishable by death (present maximum sentence: ten years in prison). Complained one tycoon: "Singapore business has been greatly affected. We do not have the peace of mind to concentrate on our affairs."