SINGAPORE: Henry Yeo, 67, was convicted on June 27 (Tuesday) of criminal breach of trust and other offences in relation to the scandal involving German fintech company Wirecard. He was given a 12-month jail sentence.
Wirecard filed for insolvency in 2020 after €1.9 billion (SGD2.9 billion) went missing, and its CEO was terminated and arrested. The police raided the company’s Singapore office in Feb 2019 after several whistleblower articles were published in the Financial Times (FT) containing allegations of accounting malpractices.
Yeo, the managing director of Jacobson Fareast Marketing Services Pte Ltd, admitted that in Dec 2018, he conspired with three employees of Wirecard Asia— Edo Kurniawan, ames Aga Wardhana and Chai Ai Lim—to misappropriate $81,870 from the firm, the police said in a June 27 press statement.
The funds were transferred illegally from Wirecard Asia’s CIMB account to Jacobson’s DBS account. After this, Yeo withdrew $79,485 and then handed it to Wardhana, who then gave $79,000 to someone else, an unknown individual.
Yeo, who kept $2,385 after facilitating this transfer, also falsified four invoices from Jacobson to Wirecard, which provided Edo with a cover-up for the illegal transfer.
“This included an invoice for a sum of $62,300, purportedly for ‘costs and charges of interim marketing intelligence reports’, when Yeo knew that these reports were not provided to Wirecard Asia,” the police statement reads.
Yeo entered guilty pleas to one count of criminal breach of trust, one count of money laundering by transferring Edo’s benefits from criminal conduct, and one count of falsifying documents in relation to Jacobson’s accounts, and five other charges have been taken into consideration in his sentencing.
Due to Yeo’s offences, the company lost $123,070.
Wardhana and Chai have also been charged and pleaded guilty and given 21 months jail and 10 months jail, respectively.
Edo is still at large, although a Warrant of Arrest and an INTERPOL Red Notice has been issued against him.
“Other aspects of the Wirecard investigations remain ongoing, and the Police will continue working with the German authorities on the Wirecard investigations,” SPF said. /TISG
MAS fines DBS, OCBC, Citibank & Swiss Life a total of S$3.8 million over Wirecard breaches