Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Former Sakae Holdings director charged with cheating, CBT of more than S$25m

SINGAPORE — A former director of Sakae Holdings, which owns the Sakae Sushi chain, was hauled to court on Friday (Aug 3) to face multiple charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and forgery amounting to more than S$25 million.

SINGAPORE — A former director of Sakae Holdings, which owns the Sakae Sushi chain, was hauled to court on Friday (Aug 3) to face multiple charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and forgery amounting to more than S$25 million.

Ong Siew Kwee, commonly known as Andy Ong, was also accused of intentionally giving false evidence in a judicial proceeding on Nov 22, 2015.

The 47-year-old has been embroiled in legal trouble since January 2013, when Sakae Holdings filed a civil suit against him for allegedly breaching his fiduciary duties as a director.

Court documents on Friday revealed that Ong, in his capacity as a director of Griffin Real Estate Investment Holdings, purportedly signed a cheque for S$8 million around May 24, 2012 to his own HSBC bank account. Sakae was a minority shareholder in Griffin.

Around Sept 13, 2012, Ong also allegedly transferred S$14.3 million from the bank account of Griffin to ERC International, a subsidiary of Entrepreneur's Resource Centre (ERC) Holdings, an education and consultancy outfit that he had founded.

On that same day, Ong was said to have further transferred another S$1.5 million to ERC Unicampus — also a subsidiary of ERC Holdings.

Four associates of Ong were charged in connection with the case on Friday.

Ong Han Boon, 43, was charged with two counts of criminal breach of trust, four counts of forgery, two counts of giving false evidence, and one other offence under the Companies Act.

Ho Yew Kong, 48, was charged with two counts of giving false evidence, and two offences under the Companies Act.

Both Ho and Ong Han Boon were former directors of Sakae.

Chua Wei Tat, 34, a former employee of Sakae's associate firm Gryphon Capital Management, was charged with two counts of giving false evidence in a judicial proceeding.

Wijesekera Mahin Chandika, 44, a Sri Lankan national, was charged with one count of intentionally giving false evidence in a judicial proceeding. According to a High Court judgment from last year, he had been employed as a lecturer by ERC Institute from March 2012 to December 2015.

Andy Ong was offered S$700,000 bail, while Ong Han Boon was offered S$450,000 bail. Ho, Chua and Mahin were each offered S$20,000 bail. They will next appear in court on Sept 10.

Andy Ong and Sakae's founder and executive chairman Douglas Foo were longtime friends.

However, they got into a legal tussle after Andy Ong invited Mr Foo to invest in a property development with him.

Mr Foo had commissioned an international accounting firm to investigate Griffin, and subsequently filed a suit against Andy Ong.

In April last year, the High Court ordered Andy Ong, Ong Han Boon and Ho to pay about S$35 million to Griffin.

Andy Ong was also ordered to pay S$2.64 million to Sakae.

The High Court had also ordered Sakae's associate firm Gryphon Capital Management to be wound up by consent in August 2017.

 

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.