Inside ‘Asia’s Fort Knox’: Gold bars, fine art — and a 66-million-year-old Triceratops

Deep inside Singapore's secretive tax-free storage facility, Le Freeport, a near-complete fossilized Triceratops that will be sold by Joopiter auction house. (Courtesy of JOOPITER via CNN Newsource)

SINGAPORE - At Singapore’s secretive Le Freeport, a fortified luxury storage facility often dubbed “Asia’s Fort Knox,” security is arguably tighter than at the international airport it connects to. Art, jewels and gold bars can enter the windowless building directly — and discreetly — from the runway at neighbouring Changi, but anyone arriving via the front gate must pass through bulletproof glass vestibules, one-by-one, before undergoing a full body scan and baggage X-ray.

The difficult part, however, is obtaining an invite in the first place.

Freeports offer ultra-rich collectors somewhere to store assets and prized possessions away from prying eyes. Often set up in high-net-worth hubs, from Geneva to Monaco, the controversial facilities are also typically tax-free, making them attractive places to sell and trade luxury goods without paying import duties or other levies — so long as everything remains on the premises.

Since opening in 2010, Singapore’s first freeport has prided itself on providing ultimate privacy in a city-state with one of the world’s highest concentrations of wealth. But Chaw Wei Yang, a cryptocurrency investor whose father owns an art storage company within Le Freeport, recently invited CNN on a rare tour of the building. Alongside his personal stash of contemporary art and collectibles, the 26-year-old has something even more valuable stored in a vault, deep inside the facility, that he wants to share with the world — and it’s at least 66 million years old.

Masterpieces and a Triceratops

Upon entering the freeport on a sweltering Singapore afternoon, the temperature immediately drops. The Swiss-designed building operates controlled conditions of 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 55 per cent relative humidity — a necessity when storing delicate commodities in a tropical climate, vintage watches or centuries-old paintings (it has both). The wine section is colder still.

“You have peace of mind that your pieces are stored in the best possible conditions,” said Chaw, who has been coming to the freeport since he was a teenager. This sense of security extends beyond the building’s heavy metal gates, he added. “With all the political uncertainties in the world, I think Singapore is one of those unique places that is still a safe bet.”

Rather than operating as a single company, the freeport hosts an ecosystem of traders and storage services specializing in different assets — including Chaw’s father’s fine art business, which occupies roughly 20 per cent of the 323,000-square-foot building. Chaw leads us there, through an austere atrium dominated by a 126-foot-long, Möbius-strip-inspired sculpture (titled, fittingly, “Cage Without Borders”) and along echoey hallways bathed in atmospheric blue light.

On either side, heavy-duty reinforced doors open onto rooms ranging in size from around 100 to over 1,000 square feet. Most are configured for storage, with paintings packed away in wooden crates. But others serve as private viewing rooms where collectors can show off wall-mounted artworks to guests or potential buyers. (Chaw’s tour had begun with a disconcerting warning about these rooms: Upon hearing any alarm, we are to evacuate immediately, as the nitrogen fire suppression system works by rapidly removing oxygen from the airtight spaces to suffocate the flames).

The art storage area houses everything from European Baroque masterpieces to Chinese ink paintings. For the past year, however, Chaw has been keeping an altogether different kind of treasure here: a near-complete Triceratops fossil.

The specimen, dubbed Trey, dates from the late Cretaceous period. It was excavated by a commercial paleontology company in the U.S. in 1993 then loaned, by its previous owner, to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, where it was seen by an estimated 1 million visitors during almost three decades on display.

The fossil was transported to Singapore in custom padded crates last year and arrived in pieces at the freeport, where it was assembled, mounted and dramatically lit. Having once roamed what is today the Wyoming badlands, Trey now stands alone in a secure room, its tail slightly curved and legs angled as if poised to take a step.

“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to own a dinosaur,” Chaw said, as we slowly circled the fossil. “I grew up with a lot of dinosaur toys. And it’s so intriguing, but also very inspiring, to see these prehistoric creatures that have been around way longer than all of us.”

Ready for auction

While a fully-grown Triceratops can be almost 30 feet long, Trey is a sub-adult and only measures around 17 feet long (and over 7 feet tall). The specimen still weighs almost a ton. Chaw said he bought the fossil around two-and-a-half years ago, and other investors have since come on board.

As collector’s items, dinosaur fossils are inherently more accessible than paintings or sculptures, he proposed. “With art, you need context, you need some background to understand the artist and the art. But for dinosaurs — and I’ve seen the reactions, from old people to kids, people from America or from Japan — the appeal is universal. People grew up with it.”

Chaw and his partners have capital appreciation in mind, too: “Of all the alternative assets I grew up seeing — wine, art, cars — I think dinosaurs are the most untapped, investment-wise,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

One reason why Chaw has gone public with his fossil is that he’s putting it on sale via Joopiter, an online auction house owned by musician, producer and Louis Vuitton men’s creative director, Pharrell Williams. Founded in 2022, the digital-first platform targets younger collectors with zeitgeisty art, merchandise and collectibles. “The interest that we’ve been receiving is really exceptional,” said Joopiter’s global head of sales, Caitlin Donovan, over Zoom, offering a price estimate of between US$4.5 million and $5.5 million.

Andre LuJan, a paleontologist working with Chaw and Joopiter on the auction, said the fossil is over 70 per cent complete, based on bone mass calculations. (Large dinosaur fossils are almost always discovered in fragments, not in their entirety; Trey’s missing bones have therefore been replaced with replicas cast from other specimens, as is normal museum practice.) This rare level of completeness, along with the fossil’s well-documented ownership history, makes Trey “a singular item,” LuJan said, also over Zoom, adding: “It’s really not comparable to any other specimen out there.”

Whether fossils like this should even be in private hands remains a matter of debate in both collector circles and scientific communities. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is among the professional organizations vocally opposing the commercial sale and private ownership of scientifically significant fossils. “I would love to see somebody buy this and place it in an institution,” said LuJan, who arrived in Singapore shortly after our tour to meet with potential buyers at the freeport.

Chaw is not disclosing how much he bought the fossil for, or the precise reasons he is selling it. But he, too, hopes Trey goes “to a good home.” Auctions are, by definition, winner-takes-all affairs, regardless of who the buyer is. But the young collector thinks Joopiter — more so than established auctioneers like Christie’s or Sotheby’s — can attract a “certain profile” of potential owners who will “understand the importance and cultural significance” of the fossil, he added.

Bullion by the billion

Just down the hall from Trey, dealers are trading in perhaps the oldest and most reliable asset of them all: gold.

Chaw takes us to BullionStar, where silver and gold bars emerge theatrically from a hidden display case. The saleroom’s window blinds then lift to reveal rows of bullion stacked two stories high. The company currently holds around $2 billion’s worth of precious metals in Singapore’s freeport, according to its deputy CEO Pete Walden.

“We have different customers from across the globe,” he added, presenting some of his most popular products (namely “more portable” ones like 100-gram gold bars, which, at the time of writing, retail for around $16,000). “If they’re holding quite large amounts, they’d also want to come here and see it in person.”

Activity at the freeport reflects global events. Gold and silver are what Walden calls “crisis commodities” that “generally do very well during periods of instability, whether that’s geopolitical instability or Trump announcing tariffs.” The U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran has been no different. “We’ve been extremely busy,” Walden added.

Advocates for freeports argue that they boost trade and investment — and they certainly make places like Singapore a more attractive proposition for the ultra-wealthy. Yet, as well as explicitly encouraging tax avoidance, the facilities also stand accused of tacitly aiding money laundering, smuggling and organized crime. In 2019, a special committee of the European Parliament recommended phasing out the freeports across the European Union, though, for now, they continue to operate widely there.

Singaporean authorities have identified the risk of financial crimes taking place within the freeport, though they have never made specific allegations of wrongdoing. Le Freeport’s CEO Lincoln Ng said the facility “fully complies with all regulatory requirements, including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing,” adding that all the businesses operating there are licensed by Singapore’s customs authorities.

Le Freeport has also struggled financially. Masterminded by Yves Bouvier, a Swiss businessman and art dealer known as the “Freeport King,” his Singapore project reportedly racked up debt and operational losses through the 2010s, as banks retreated from physical commodities and Chinese demand slowed amid a crackdown on overseas luxury spending.

In 2022, Chinese crypto billionaire Jihan Wu’s company Bitdeer purchased the facility for a reported $28 million — a significant markdown on a building that cost approximately $100 million to complete. Ng said Le Freeport is now a “cashflow positive business.”

New age of collecting

Much of Singapore’s freeport is off-limits to reporters. During our tour, Chaw frequently asks us to refrain from filming and taking photos, due to concerns over security or clients’ privacy. But his art-filled personal room is another matter.

Like many Gen-Z collectors, Chaw’s passions are rooted in street art, streetwear and limited-edition merch — interests reflected on the concrete walls of his personal bunker-like room. Artworks on conspicuous display include a large canvas by graffiti legend Futura, one of Damien Hirst’s spot paintings and a signed “Squid Game” figurine by American artist KAWS. Chaw views collecting as a combination of three factors: appreciation of the art, its investment value and the resulting social capital (or collecting as “a flex,” as he puts it, whereby “communities open up for you that aren’t necessarily available to everybody else”).

Chaw uses the space to host friends, fellow collectors and celebrities. Low chairs and an L-shaped sofa are arranged around a marble table adorned with a chess board signed by five-time chess world champion Magnus Carlsen, who played an exhibition match at the freeport in 2024. More recently, K-pop group Seventeen visited following the band’s sell-out show at Singapore’s National Stadium.

Also on display are several Trey miniatures, as well as a fiberglass scale replica of the Triceratops’ skull. They were made by laser-scanning the fossil to produce accurate molds. Replicas are — along with totes, caps and T-shirts — part of a merchandise drive surrounding the upcoming sale. “We want to create a cultural moment around it, and allow people to participate in it, get excited about Trey, get more informed about him and even participate in it through merchandise,” Chaw said.

Having grown up surrounded by museum-quality paintings hidden from public view, Chaw said he is now on a mission to “democratize” art. In 2021, he founded the digital platform Co-Museum, which offers “co-collectors” shared ownership of artworks and cultural objects that might otherwise be out of their reach. This may soon include fossils, which he called the “next wave” of collectibles, comparable to contemporary Asian art in the early 2000s or Pokémon cards now.

“We have other dinosaurs that we have acquired or are in the process of acquiring,” he said, adding: “We’re gonna really put dinosaurs and fossils at the front of alternative asset classes.”

CNN’s Maheshpreet Kaur Narula contributed to this report.

Oscar Holland, CNN