Former Sembmarine finance chief sentenced to 39 months' jail

SEMBCORP Marine's former 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 has been sentenced to 39 months' imprisonment.

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.

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 options trades positions he held with a host of banks, including OCBC Bank, DBS Bank, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered Bank.

Wee had originally been slapped with 57 charges, when he was charged in January this year. The prosecution chose to proceed on nine of the charges, taking the rest into consideration in their sentencing submissions.