TWO former senior employees of UOB Kay Hian Private Limited (UOBKH) were charged on Wednesday for allegedly lying to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in relation to reports on a then Catalist aspirant. Lan Kang Ming, 38, and Wee Toon Lee, 34, each face three charges of providing MAS with false information in October 2018 in relation to due diligence reports on an unidentified company applying to list on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. MAS said in a media statement on Wednesday that it was performing an onsite inspection of UOBKH between June and August 2018, to assess the latter's controls, policies and procedures in relation to its role as an issue manager for Initial Public Offering (IPOs). During the examination, Lan and Wee were said to have provided different versions of a due diligence report relating to background checks on a company applying to be listed on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. UOBKH had acted as the issu...
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Michelle Quah
30 October 2014
Former Sembcorp Marine group finance director Wee Sing Guan pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a host of fraud charges relating to currency bets he took years ago that cost the group US$303 million in losses.
He was sentenced to 39 months’ jail. Wee, 65, pleaded guilty to nine charges of falsifying the foreign exchange trade valuation reports of Jurong Shipyard, Sembmarine’s wholly owned unit, of which he was a director.
He had originally been slapped with 57 charges, when he was charged in January this year. The prosecution, led by deputy public prosecutor Kevin Yong, chose to proceed on nine of the charges, taking the rest into consideration in their sentencing submissions. The offences, under the Penal Code, carry a maximum penalty of an unspecified fine and a seven-year jail term, for each charge.
Wee, represented by Julian Tay of Lee & Lee, was accused of failing to report the losses incurred on trading positions he held with various banks between 2005 and 2007.
According to the charge sheets, these were hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of marked-to-market losses that Wee had incurred on foreign exchange and option trade positions he held with a host of banks, including OCBC Bank, DBS Bank, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered Bank. He was charged some six years after his alleged wrongdoing first came to light.
Sembmarine had announced in October 2007 that Wee, then its group finance director, had made large unauthorised currency bets in the euro and the US dollar with 11 banks using the account of Jurong Shipyard.
The news stunned the industry and financial markets.
Soon after its announcement, Sembmarine was locked in a bruising battle with the banks to reduce its losses, with Sembmarine arguing that the transactions were invalid and not binding. It fired Wee from the group, while Jurong Shipyard said that it was lodging a complaint against him with the Commercial Affairs Department.
In February 2008, Sembmarine announced that it had reached full and final settlements with nine of the 11 banks, for just US$9.1 million. That left it fighting a US$50.7 million claim by BNP, while trying to recover another US$198.9 million that it had paid to SocGen. BNP had threatened to wind up Jurong Shipyard, but lost that court battle; it settled the claim for US$30 million in December 2008.
During that hearing, Wee’s unsigned affidavit was produced in court; in it, he claimed that BNP executives had pressured him to take up some “very aggressive instruments” to cover up his initial losses. In the affidavit, he claimed that Jurong Shipyard’s management had no idea he was involved in such risky trades until the middle of October 2007.
But his lawyers argued that their client’s acts and foreign exchange transactions were, at all material times, authorised and mandated by the board of Jurong Shipyard. In September 2010, Sembmarine and SocGen agreed to settle the claim for US$40 million, without any admission of liability by either side.