RAYMOND Goh, the founder and non-executive chairman of insolvent offshore oil and gas services contractor Swiber, was on Wednesday (Apr 17) slapped with a fine of S$100,000 for a charge of making a false announcement on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) related to a project.
Another charge of playing a role in the company’s failure to disclose material information to the bourse was taken into account for the sentencing.
Goh, 56, pleaded guilty to the first and primary charge from prosecutors at the State Courts, with the case presided over by District Judge Kamala Ponnampalam. If he fails to pay the fine of S$100,000 by Apr 24, he will face one month’s imprisonment.
The first charge by the prosecutors fell under Section 199 (b)(ii) of the Securities and Futures Act (SFA) relating to Swiber’s SGX announcement in December 2014 about having secured a US$710 million award to provide certain services for an offshore field development project in West Africa.
Investigations later revealed that Swiber, through its senior management, had known that the announcement was materially false, because the company’s wholly owned unit – Swiber Offshore Construction – had signed only a letter of intent authorising expenditure of up to US$2 million on the project.
This, the charge read, was an instance of “making a statement that was false in a material particular and that was likely to induce the purchase of securities by other persons”.
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The second charge that was taken into account for the sentencing said that Goh, as a director of Swiber, connived in the company’s “reckless failure” to notify SGX of information that was required to be disclosed under the listing rules from Oct 24, 2014, to Jul 27, 2016.
Under the second charge, it was noted that Brunei Shell Petroleum Co had on Oct 24, 2014, served Swiber Offshore Construction a notice of termination for the Champion waterflood project.
This constituted information that was “necessary for disclosure to avoid the establishment of a false market in Swiber’s shares”, charge sheets said, and was required to be disclosed by the then-listed company under Rule 703(1)(a) of SGX’s mainboard rules.
In failing to do so, Goh had committed an offence under Section 203(2) of the SFA. The amended version of the second charge was not available on public records as at press time.
In March, Swiber’s former chief executive Francis Wong was fined S$100,000 for his role in the materially false announcement that had overstated the company’s business prospects.
The company went into judicial management back in 2016, and delisted from the SGX mainboard in June last year.
