Mauritian national Naushad Carrim Tengur’s offence was linked to a $128 million oil heist from Shell Eastern Petroleum’s Pulau Bukom site. - Photo: ST
SINGAPORE: A surveyor accepted around US$6,000 (S$7,900) in bribes from a colleague in exchange for turning a blind eye to unauthorised loadings of Shell’s gas oil onto marine vessels.
Mauritian national Naushad Carrim Tengur’s offence was linked to a $128m oil heist from Shell Eastern Petroleum’s Pulau Bukom site.
On Friday (Nov 1), the 48-year-old Singapore permanent resident was sentenced to two months’ jail and ordered to pay a penalty of more than $4,000.
District Judge Chee Min Ping convicted him of a graft charge after a trial in October.
At the time of the offence, Naushad was working for a company called Inspectorate (Singapore) that surveyed marine vessels for the volume of cargo loaded into their tanks.
In 2022, he was one of 12 people who were charged in court with corruption-related offences in connection to a conspiracy to misappropriate oil from Shell’s Pulau Bukom site.
The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau said in a statement on April 14 that year: “Between 2014 and 2017, the 12 individuals allegedly accepted bribes totalling at least US$213,000.
“These bribes were either given to them directly, or through intermediaries, by three former employees of Shell, namely Juandi Pungot, Muzaffar Ali Khan Muhamad Akram and Richard Goh Chee Keong.”
Juandi, then 45, admitted in February 2022 to misappropriating 203,403 tonnes of gas oil worth $128 million. He was given 29 years’ jail in March 2022.
Muzaffar, then 42, was sentenced to 26½ years’ jail in August 2024. The case involving Goh, 55, is pending.
For Naushad’s case, the court heard that he had accepted the US$6,000 over two incidents between 2016 and 2017 from Muhammad Khairul Asri Mohamed Hanafiah, who was also a surveyor with Inspectorate at the time.
Deputy public prosecutors Norman Yew and Jeremy Bin stated in court documents that Khairul, 40, pleaded guilty in May 2022 before he was sentenced to four months’ jail and ordered to pay a penalty of more than $8,000.
The DPPs added that the surveyors’ duties included inspecting the tanks on marine vessels docked at Shell’s site at Pulau Bukom.
They had to accurately report the volume of gas oil in the vessels’ tanks before and after Shell loaded the fuel into them – the volume of which was determined by Shell’s contracts with its customers.
The DPPs told the court: “The purpose of the inspections and reporting was to ensure that there was no unauthorised loading of excess gas oil from Shell to these vessels.”
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In 2016 and 2017, Juandi and Muzaffar worked together to dishonestly misappropriate Shell’s gas oil and load them into various vessels in exchange for money without Shell’s authorisation.
To conceal such offences, they bribed surveyors to turn a blind eye to the unauthorised loadings.
The DPPs said that for the current case, the incidents involved Khairul’s inspection of a vessel called Great Ocean in January 2016 and another vessel called Petrolimex 08 in January 2017.
During the trial, Khairul testified that towards the end of 2015, Juandi had approached him to join a scheme “whereby extra gas are loaded into a vessel”.
In exchange, Khairul would be given cash to “keep a blind eye for the extra loading of gas oil”.
The DPPs said that after receiving the money, he split the amount equally with Naushad and another colleague, A. Duraisamy, then 60, who was sentenced to 10 months’ jail and a fine of nearly $43,000 in August 2022.
Duraisamy, Juandi and Muzaffar had also testified during the trial. The trio told the court that Naushad, Duraisamy and Khairul were part of the corrupt arrangement.
During Naushad’s trial, the DPPs said it was inconceivable that the four main witnesses in the case had lied to frame Naushad, who claimed that he had never received the US$6,000.
Naushad, who was not represented by a lawyer, had also claimed that he was unaware of any corrupt arrangements or unauthorised loadings. - The Straits Times/ANN
