Posted by Yuanda Xu.
On Oct. 30, 2014, Sembcorp Marine’s finance director Wee Sing Guan was sentenced to 39 months in prison for falsifying the accounts of the group’s Jurong Shipyard, Sembcorp’s wholly owned unit. The company lost “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 (BNP), Societe Generale (SocGen) and Standard Chartered Bank.”
According to criminal law, falsifying account records is an unlawful action. Falsifying records can influence the stock market by making investors believe the company’s stock is worth it to buy. But after a company goes bankrupt, people who hold the stock will lose all their money. The offenses “carry a maximum penalty of an unspecified fine and a seven-year jail term, for each charge.”
Yuanda is a business management major at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.