A fantastic article from Baird Maritime as usual.
I am so grateful that both Hieronymus Bosch and Yuen Teen Mak have raised awareness of the Tri-tanic! For too long I felt I was singing solo, and have tolerated much abuse for speaking out.
I first raised concerns about board members of EZRA and Triyards with Singapore authorities in 2015, and the Police have this year advised that there is insufficient evidence to even commence an INVESTIGATION. That is NOT true.
I suspect the real reason behind the reluctance to investigate is because questions would need to be asked, including but not limited to...
1. Why a former client of a now prominent Government Minister was allowed to offer A$3.5 million which would hide a writ that implicated the client in a pattern of fraud, and had been served on two subsidiaries of SGX listed EZRA Holdings?
2. Why the Legal Department of DBS Bank took almost eight-weeks to refuse to authenticate two DBS letters that had been used in a conspiracy to defraud and to aid a proposed acquisition by Triyards?
3. Why DBS Legal was able to dictate that the two DBS letters could NOT be referred to in a whistleblower submission?
4. With the Attorney General in a position of conflict, why is the AGC advising the police that there is insufficient evidence for the police to commence an investigation?
5. Why have Singapore's regulators been impotent?
Singapore's ruling party are dealing with a number of scandals at the moment and it might not want questions raised about a possible institutional cover-up which took place under its watch... Especially when the Singapore Prime Minister promises all and sundry honesty, transparency, propriety, no cover-ups and no-one being above the law in Singapore!
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"I love Singapore and I don’t want to sound negative, but seriously? It took the Commercial Affairs Department of the Singapore Police Force and the Monetary Authority of Singapore almost seven years to place charges after the SGX had reviewed the case and found that Swiber was in breach of the rules with the announcement. Why?
"Ezra’s Tri-Tanic – perhaps another “Tri” is needed?
This seems disappointing, but maybe it means that some of the other high flyers of Singapore’s offshore boom might still be held to account if further investigations are going on slowly in the background. We have no idea.
However, we do believe that corporate governance in some Singaporean listed companies that went bust during the crisis was weaker than it should have been. Mak Yuen Teen has already published an excellent five part blog on the corporate governance issues that afflicted Ezra Holdings, Emas Offshore, and Triyards, three listed companies with intertwined shareholdings, dealings, and directors. He dubbed this fiasco the “Tri-Tanic”.
“Mr Goh and his former Swiber colleagues can only reflect on why they face criminal charges for a corporate announcement, when those who were complicit in Keppel for alleged bribe payments of US$55 million to officials of Brazilian state-owned oil giant Petrobras received only a warning.
The wheels of justice grind mighty slow, and sometimes they grind imperceptibly.” extracts
