Tee International CFO resigns amid unauthorised payments probe

Singapore

TEE International ordered its group chief financial officer to leave last week due to her involvement in certain unauthorised payments, even as the man who allegedly directed these remittances remains a non-executive director of the company.

The engineering firm said over the weekend that CFO Yeo Ai Mei resigned last week after a three-man nominating committee decided that her services should be terminated in view of her involvement in the unauthorised payments.

Ms Yeo tendered her resignation after the committee's decision was relayed to her by interim group CEO Eric Phua Boon Kin, the group said. This corrects the group's earlier statement that Ms Yeo was leaving to "dedicate more time to her personal commitment".

Ms Yeo resigned last Thursday and is currently serving a six-month notice period. A probe into the unauthorised payments is ongoing.

Last year, independent auditors Deloitte & Touche noted during their audit of Tee International that the group had paid S$3.75 million to former group CEO Phua Chian Kin and Oscar Investment, an offshore company he controls.

Mr Phua Chian Kin was relieved of his CEO duties in September last year but remains a director of the company. His younger brother, Eric Phua, has stepped in as interim CEO.

At first, Mr Phua Chian Kin told Deloitte that he had taken an advance of S$3 million to pay for expenses to secure new projects for the group.

But he could not provide supporting documents and later said that S$2.5 million of the advance payment was utilised to repay a loan obtained by Oscar from a third party lender, while he spent the balance of S$500,000, before fully repaying the S$3 million to Tee International last August.

Tee International's board of directors later said that these payments were more properly classified as unauthorised remittances.

In September last year, they appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers Risk Services to investigate the facts surrounding the remittances and determine if any other similar remittances had taken place between June 2017 to end-August 2019.

Deloitte has since issued a disclaimer of opinion in respect of Tee International's audited financial statements for the year ended May 31, 2019.

Tee International shares rose 0.1 Singapore cent or 2.27 per cent to S$0.045 on Monday.