ST Marine’s ex-financial controller pleads guilty to falsifying accounts
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SINGAPORE — Singapore Technologies (ST) Marine’s former group financial controller and senior vice-president (finance) has pleaded guilty to falsifying accounts by agreeing to have her staff in the finance department process false claims for non-existent entertainment expenses.
Ong Teck Liam, 59, was convicted on Friday (Feb 19) of 10 counts of conspiring with other former ST Marine executives to make false claims with the intent to defraud her employer.
Another 108 similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing. The court heard that officers of ST Marine had made corrupt payments to secure more business by bribing the employees of the company’s customers who had sought ship repair services.
The officers negotiating the bribes would requisition for the cash needed by using petty-cash vouchers to claim for non-existent entertainment expenses.
Between 2000 and 2011, at least S$24.9 million in bribes were made. Those who made these corrupt payments had also acted with the approval of key members of the ST Marine senior management team.
When Ong took up the post of the group financial controller in November 2007, she was asked to sign a set of cash cheques that were supposedly for the reimbursement of entertainment expenses.
These expenses had already been approved by then Senior Vice-President Teh Yew Shyan of ST Marine’s Tuas Yard.
Ong noticed that there were no supporting receipts for the entertainment expenses that had supposedly been incurred and queried her staff from the finance department about it.
This was an anomaly as such claims would usually require supporting receipts before they could be processed.
On that same occasion, a senior member in the department told Ong that these were not genuine claims, and were in fact “cash commissions” or bribes made by the ST Marine officers to obtain sales for the company.
Ong was informed that such a practice had been going on in the company for several years. She was later given a written document, prepared in 2004, which set out the department’s role in processing, preparing and disbursing payments for these claims. It also contained specific instructions on how to avoid detection.
For instance, such claimed amounts should not be in exact or round figures and the cheques issued should not be in running order.
Ong was also told that then-president of ST Marine, See Leong Teck, had previously approved and gave directions on this practice of making bogus claims on entertainment expenses to fund the “cash commission” payments.
When See was succeeded by Chang Cheow Teck as president in March 2008, the latter did not tell Ong to put a stop to the practice, which continued during Chang’s tenure until April 2010.
Ong continued to agree to having her staff at the finance department process the false claims and sign off on the cash cheques, despite knowing they were used for bribes during her tenure from 2007 to 2011.
Between Nov 1, 2007 and April 20, 2010, Ong conspired to make false claims that totalled up to S$521,496.
Three former senior executives of ST Marine are also being prosecuted for graft. Former senior vice-president (Tuas Yard) Mok Kim Whang, 65; former president of commercial business Tan Mong Seng, 64; and ex-chief operating officer Han Yew Kwang, 58, are accused of conspiring with others to making petty-cash claims for fake entertainment expenses amounting to almost S$6.64 million.
See is also accused of seven counts of conspiring to corruptly bribe agents of the shipyard’s customers, while Chang is accused of giving almost S$274,000 in bribes on three occasions.
ST Marine is a subsidiary of government-linked defence conglomerate, ST Engineering.
The series of charges against the former executives came about three years after ST Engineering made public that some of its employees were being investigated by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.
For each count of falsifying accounts, Ong can be jailed up to seven years or fined or both. She will be sentenced at a later date.
