Indian-origin Singaporean sentenced to 10 yrs in connection with Wirecard AG fraud

Singapore, Jan 6 (PTI) An Indian-origin Singaporean was on Tuesday sentenced to 10 years in jail for involvement in falsification of documents concerning hundreds of millions of dollars by a Singapore-based company linked to Wirecard AG.

Wirecard AG was a German payments company that collapsed in 2020.

A Briton was also given six-and-a-half years in the case.

R Shanmugaratnam, 59, and James Henry O'Sullivan, 51, were each handed jail terms by the State Courts at a sentencing hearing, according to a Channel News Asia report.

Both had been convicted of numerous charges last September following a trial.

Shanmugaratnam, who was given the longer jail sentence, is a director of local accounting firm Citadelle Corporate Services.

O'Sullivan had engaged Citadelle's services to set up companies in Singapore and to provide company secretarial services.

In September, Shanmugaratnam was convicted of 13 charges for falsifying 13 balance confirmation letters between 2016 and 2018 with fraudulent intent.

O'Sullivan was found guilty of five charges for abetting Shanmugaratnam by instigating him to fraudulently issue five of those letters in 2017, according to the report.

Both men had taken instructions from senior Wirecard executives, issuing several false confirmation letters and intentionally misrepresenting to auditors that Wirecard AG had hundreds of millions in Euros held in Citadelle’s escrow bank accounts in Singapore, according to media reports.

According to prosecutors, at all material periods mentioned in the letters, Citadelle had not held any money for Wirecard AG.

“The scale of the falsification is unprecedented," said Deputy Public Prosecutors Gordon Oh, Alexandria Shamini Joseph and Louis Ngia.

According to the prosecution, the balances misrepresented in each confirmation letter ranged from 20 million euros (SGD 30 million) to about 327.5 million euros, describing the individual sums alone as "significant".

Wirecard was made insolvent in 2020.

After the sentences were passed, both men told the court through their lawyers that they will be filing appeals against their convictions and sentences.

They also have pending charges related to falsification that have been fixed for pre-trial conferences.

Both men were offered bail pending their appeals, according to the report. PTI GS GRS GRS GRS