Oriental Group's former CEO, execs hauled to court for alleged misappropriation, securities fraud, cheating

FORMER executives, including the chief executive officer (CEO), and related individuals of wound-up Oriental Group have been charged with offences under the Securities and Futures Act and the Penal Code.

Oriental, which was previously listed on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange (SGX), delisted after the Singapore High Court ordered the group to be wound up in 2019. The steel trader had earlier failed to secure a deal with potential investors to justify an extension of its judicial management order.

The former CEO was charged over allegedly misappropriating a sum of S$500,000 entrusted to him in his capacity as chief executive between November 2014 and August 2015.

Investigations against the CEO are ongoing; he had left Singapore prior to the commencement of investigations and was arrested in Malaysia on Dec 1, 2021, the Singapore Police Force said in a statement on Thursday (Dec 23).

Oriental's former group financial controller, finance manager and a substantial shareholder were also charged over allegedly conspiring with various persons to create a false appearance of the company's share price between April 2015 and January 2016.

Separately, the former group financial controller was charged over allegedly instigating a former employee to forge a document for the purpose of cheating.

Meanwhile, 7 individuals were charged over allegedly placing orders in the group's shares - under the instruction of the former CEO - without the authorisation of their respective brokerages, "thereby engaging in practices which were likely to operate as deceptions on these brokerage firms".

In 2016, Oriental received a special audit report that highlighted potential legal and regulatory breaches at the group from 2013 to 2015, and noted involvement of former key directors and officers of the company in the potential breaches.

That year, the company terminated former CEO Lee Wan Sing, who had been appointed chief executive in 2014, and said its board was investigating alleged unauthorised deals made by then chairman Wu Dingrong and his son-in-law and then executive director Sun Lu.

Later, the High Court placed the company under judicial management upon a creditor's application.

In 2018, SGX reprimanded the company and 8 individuals - Wu Dingrong, Lee Wan Sing, Sun Lu, former non-executive director Richard Ong Wee Chuan, former independent directors Tan Song Kwang and Koh Choon Kong, then independent director Chua Hung Meng and former group financial controller Lee Ong - for several breaches of listing rules.

These include providing misleading and inaccurate announcements in relation to 3 fundraising exercises and unauthorised corporate guarantees extended in favour of its interested persons and/or unauthorised interested person transaction.