Exactly this.
The country's progress and management is extremely good, however it's enabled mostly by exploitation of migrant workers and various kind of white collar crimes (ie, facilitating business for illegal or sanctionned entities - cf Nvidia chips for China for example)
I think specifically for example of getting Nvidia chips to China, many Singaporeans would say that that is only illegal because the US deems it so. There is no moral reason.
Agree, the word crime was too strong. It's more of a grey zone.