Boss of luxury watch wholesaler could face 20 months’ jail for cheating bank of S$900,000
SINGAPORE — The managing director of a luxury watch wholesaler that went into liquidation could face up to 20 months’ jail for using fake invoices to deceive a bank into disbursing more than S$900,000 to his firm in 2012.
Quek Chin Guan, 53, the boss of Citimex International (Singapore), initially denied the 16 charges that were brought against him in 2016, and sought trial.
Records state that he was a bankrupt at the time.
But on the first day of what was supposed to be a five-day trial in January this year, he pleaded guilty to four of the 16 charges.
The remaining 12 charges will be taken into consideration in sentencing.
On Friday (Oct 26), the prosecution urged the court to impose a 20-month jail term on Quek, but his lawyer argued instead for a 12-month sentence on grounds that the director cheated not for personal gain, but to enable his company to function as it was facing cash flow problems.
According to court documents, Quek committed the offences after Citimex ran into severe liquidity issues in the first quarter of 2012, and was not able to repay certain debts owed to the Bank of East Asia.
Since May 2010, the bank had been in a receivables purchasing financing arrangement with the firm, under which Citimex would assign receivables for its sales transactions to the bank in return for cash advances.
These advances were to be repaid to the bank with interest when Citimex collected the receivables.
In order to repay debts owed to the bank, Quek signed and certified as true copies four invoices addressed to luxury watch retailer group The Hour Glass, so that he could get advances of S$728,294.77 in total.
He dated the invoices between Jan 31 and March 9, 2012, even though he knew that no such sales had been made to The Hour Glass.
He then instructed his finance and accounts assistant, Ms Teng Kheng Eng, to submit the invoices and receivables purchasing financing application forms to Bank of East Asia.
The bank subsequently approved the applications, and delivered the amount to Citimex on March 21, 2012.
One of the charges taken into consideration in the sentencing also stated that he received another advance of S$184,829.23 through the same method on the same date.
But court documents did not indicate to whom that false invoice was made out to.
Quek’s offences were only discovered in 2013 when he was called in for questioning at the Commercial Affairs Department about the Hour Glass invoices.
The court heard during his mitigation on Friday that the physical stocks owned by Citimex could fetch S$15 million, and audit firm KPMG is in the process of selling them on the firm’s behalf to raise money so as to pay back the bank.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Leong Weng Tat said that no restitution had been paid to date.
The prosecution had previously noted that an earlier arrangement to pledge certain stocks owed by one of Citimex’s related companies to the Bank of East Asia did not come to fruition as the stocks had to be ultimately returned to the bank.
It was not made known what eventually happened to the stocks.
Quek is expected to be sentenced on Nov 8. He remains out on a bail of S$150,000.
