SingPost's former CEO Vincent Phang (left) and CFO Vincent Yik said they will vigorously contest the termination of their employment. - ST
SINGAPORE: The former chief executive and chief financial officer of Singapore Post (SingPost), who were both fired on Saturday (Dec 21) over a whistle-blower’s report, said the reasons provided for their termination are without substantive grounds and that the process leading to the move was not conducted fairly.
“It is our position that the termination is without merits and was also procedurally unfair,” former CEO Vincent Phang and former CFO Vincent Yik said in a joint statement sent to the media on Dec 23.
They added: “We vigorously contest the termination of our employment, both on merits and on the grounds of procedural unfairness.
“We categorically reject any suggestion that we were grossly negligent, had behaved inappropriately or had sought to misrepresent facts at any point.”
Phang, Yik and a third official, Li Yu – who was CEO of an international business unit at the company – were terminated with immediate effect on Dec 21 after investigations stemming from a whistle-blower’s report were concluded.
SingPost said in a Dec 22 exchange filing that it received a whistle-blower report earlier in 2024 relating to its international e-commerce logistics parcels business.
The report alleged that the company manually updated delivery codes for parcels to delivery failure without attempting to deliver them. These entries were done without supporting documentation.
Internal investigations revealed that three managers in the business unit had committed serious breaches of the company’s code of conduct by manually updating the delivery status codes when no delivery attempt had been made.
The SingPost statement did not include information on the contents of the parcels, how much they were worth and why they were not delivered.
However, the customer the parcels were being shipped for has been informed and a settlement agreement has been mutually agreed and paid. The contract with the customer has been also been renewed.
SingPost did not identify the customer or state the settlement amount.
The three individuals involved have been terminated from employment and a police report against them has been made by the company.
The internal investigations also found that Phang, Yik and Li had accorded undue weight to the misrepresentations made by the employees of the business unit without any independent substantiation or evidence. The three were also found to be “grossly negligent” in their handling of internal investigations.
In the move to terminate their employments, the board of directors noted that it had lost confidence and trust in the judgments of Phang and Yik and Li’s abilities to perform their duties towards promoting and protecting the interests of the company.
SingPost did not provide further information on why the three officials were sacked.
In their statement, Phang and Yik said: “We disagree with and are disappointed at the decision of the board to terminate us from our roles at the company after years of dedicated and committed service.”
They added that they had cooperated with the internal investigations.
“We have at all times during our tenure at SingPost acted in the best interests of the company and held ourselves to the highest standards of leadership and management, and will seek recourse against any allegations to the contrary.”
Shares of SingPost opened at 52 cents on Dec 23, down 8 per cent. - The Straits Times/ANN
