We reported yesterday that among the Singapore-based entities, officers, intermediaries and addresses released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) is the name Kwa Chong Seng.
The Panama Papers reveal its Mr Kwa to be a beneficiary of Temburaya Limited, and the registered address is indicated as 19 Victoria Park Road Singapore 299648.
According to Google Maps this is what 19 Victoria Park Road looks like.
YourSingaporeMap.com, a location-based map application which is updated monthly and helps users find what’s near a location in Singapore providing them with in-depth demographics and property trend analysis data, had listed a Temburaya Limited.
The listing was taken down after after 2 Mar 2016. Google search however provides a cached copy of the information as was found in the page before that date.
The status of the company, Temburaya Limited, as indicated on YourSingaporeMap.com was ‘Live’ before 2 Mar 2016. The company was also listed as having a Unique Entity Number (UEN), T08UF3302C.
UEN is the standard identification number of an entity. UEN is for registered entities as NRIC is for Singapore citizens. The UEN uniquely identifies the entity.
A search in the UEN website for the search terms ‘Temburaya Limited‘, or ‘Temburaya‘, and even the UEN T08UF3302C, showed that there were no records of such an entity.
TODAY reported that “there were many familiar-sounding organisations among those found in the ICIJ database but several — including the Law Society of Singapore, Temasek Wellness Investments and Vertex Holdings — turned out to be unrelated to their namesakes.”
It has not been established if the Kwa Chong Seng mentioned in the Panama Papers leak is the same person who is the Executive Chairman at Olam International.
The Mr Kwa who is the Executive Chairman of Olam served as as deputy chairman of Temasek Holdings from 1997 to 2012. He is also the chairman of the Boards of Neptune Orient Lines, Singapore Technologies Engineering and Fullerton Fund Management Co.
The Executive Chairman of Olam also sits on the board of the Singapore Exchange and the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), and is also deputy chairman of the Singapore Public Service Commission.
Singapore-Window in an article dated 10 Feb 2012 (link: http://www.singapore-window.org/sw02/020210gl.htm), claims that the Mr Kwa who is the Executive Chairman of Olam is a nephew of Madam Kwa Gek Choo, the wife of Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
ICIJ said that it was releasing the new details in “public interest”, in an effort to “find out who’s behind almost 320,000 offshore companies and trusts from the Panama Papers and the offshore leaks investigations.”
In April 2016, Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, become the first major casualty of the Panama Papers leak. He resigned from his office amid mounting public outrage that his family had sheltered money offshore.
Just days after the Panama Papers toppled Iceland’s prime minister, the British premier, David Cameron, faced career-threatening accusations of financial impropriety. The Panama Papers leak exposed the British Prime Minister’s late father’s offshore fund. Mr Cameron admitted that he had owned shares in the trust, after several days of dodging questions about what interests he had in it.
There were no suggestions that Cameron or his father Ian broke the law.
Ministry of Finance and Monetary Authority of Singapore’s spokesmen commenting on the new Panama Papers leak implicating Singapore based entities and people said: “We are reviewing the batch of information that was released this morning on the persons and entities identified in the Panama Papers. If there is evidence of wrong-doing by any individual or entity in Singapore, we will not hesitate to take firm supervisory and enforcement action.”