Court convicts former Trek 2000 CFO for falsification of accounts, other offences

The former official falsified the financial statement for FY ended 31 December 2015.

Gurcharan Singh, the former Chief Financial Officer of mainboard-listed Trek 2000 International Limited was convicted for falsification of accounts, forgery, and other offences.

According to the Singapore Police Force, Singh was convicted on the following charges:
one charge under Section 204 read with Section 331 of the Securities and Futures Act for failing to make immediate announcements of interested person transactions;

• One charge under Section 477A of the Penal Code (“PC”) for conspiring with two others to falsify Trek 2000’s financial statements;
• One charge under Section 417 read with Section 116 of the PC for engaging in a conspiracy with three others to cheat Trek 2000’s auditors;
• Three charges under Section 465 read with Section 109 of the PC for instigating an employee to forge documents; and
• Two charges under Section 477A read with Section 109 of the PC for abetting another to falsify documents.

In 2011, Trek 2000 entered into seven transactions worth US$2.79m with T-Data Systems (T-Data). At the time of the transactions, the wife of the then-Executive Director of Trek 2000, Poo Teng Pin, was the sole shareholder of T-Data.

“Under the SGX-ST Mainboard Rules, T-Data was an interested person in relation to Trek 2000 and all seven transactions were required to be immediately announced. However, Trek 2000 recklessly failed to make the necessary disclosures, and this failure was attributable to, among other things, the neglect of Singh,” the police said.

“Singh knew that T-Data was an interested person but did not take any steps to get Trek 2000 to make the necessary disclosures,” the police added.

In 2015, Singh also conspired with the former Trek 2000 CEO, Henn Tan and Poo to falsify the company’s financial statements for the financial year (“FY”) that ended 31 December 2015, recording a fictitious sale to Unimicron Technology Corp (Unimicron) worth US$3.2m.

The following year, the company’s auditors,  Ernst & Young LLP (EY), queried the fictitious sale to Unimicron and requested supporting documents.

“Singh then conspired with Tan, Poo and another employee who is also facing charges, to deceive EY into believing that the sale to Unimicron was genuine. Thereafter, Singh instigated an employee to forge two bank advice to support the fictitious Unimicron sale, and together with his co-conspirators, created a document setting out a false chronology of events relating to the fictitious Unimicron sale. EY was ultimately not deceived and made a report to the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA),” the SPF explained.