SINGAPORE — Sembcorp Marine’s former finance director Wee Sing Guan was sentenced to 39 months in jail for falsifying accounts that led to a US$303 million (S$386 million) foreign-exchange loss, the Bloomberg news agency reported.

Singapore needs to send a “strong signal” that such conduct will not be tolerated, Deputy Chief District Judge Jennifer Marie said in handing down the sentence today (Oct 29). Wee abused the company’s trust, she said.

Wee, 66, pleaded guilty to nine charges of defrauding the company in the “unauthorised” foreign-exchange trades that Sembcorp Marine uncovered in October 2007. He was charged with a total of 57 counts.

Sembcorp Marine, the world’s second-largest maker of oil rigs, fired Wee in November 2007 for making the unauthorised transactions and sought a criminal probe. The losses triggered lawsuits with banks involved in the trades and led a unit of the company to near bankruptcy, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors had sought a jail term of four and a half years. Wee’s actions were not for personal gain, but to recover the losses, his lawyer Julian Tay said.

“The web of lies spun by the accused led to one of the largest derivatives losses in Singapore’s corporate history,” prosecutor Ang Feng Qian said. It “inflicted substantial damage to the finances and reputation of one of Singapore’s largest listed companies”.

Sembcorp Marine reached agreements with nine of the 11 banks involved to close out the transactions in US dollars and euros, the company said in February 2008. Its net income in the fourth quarter of 2007 plunged 99 per cent, the most in five years, because of the transactions.