General manager of Heineken Asia Pacific Export and his wife charged for cheating

SINGAPORE — A general manager of Heineken Asia Pacific Export (Hape) and his wife were charged on Thursday (10 March) over schemes that allegedly cheated his firm out of $10 million.

Loh Yew Hui, 52, and Hazel Neo Peh Hoon, 50, are accused of engaging in a conspiracy with two others to cheat Hape.

The two are Chan Poh Kim, 63, and Melissa Teo Sue Tshin, 43. Teo is the director of Pines Impex and Citrus Impex. Both Citrus and Pines are in the business of trading goods.

The alleged offences span from March 2017 to July 2019.

The quartet were allegedly involved in a scheme where they concealed the fact that Neo was running Pines, misleading Hape into awarding a sale and purchase agreement worth about $6,000,000 to Pines.

A second scheme is said to have involved Loh, Neo and Teo. Loh allegedly concealed from Hape the fact that his wife was running the business of Citrus, hence misleading Hape into selling approximately 21,700 hectolitres of beer products worth about $4,089,000 to Citrus.

Loh, Neo and Teo were each charged with three counts of cheating with abetment, while Chan was given one count of the same nature.

All four will also face charges of concealing and converting, or facilitating control of the benefits of criminal conduct.

Loh and Neo were each handed nine charges for engaging in a conspiracy to conceal and convert their benefits from criminal conduct, worth around $2,470,000. Around $2,314,000 of this sum is said to have been hidden in the bank accounts of Teo, Neo and a private entity, and another $156,000 was allegedly converted to payment of debts and for capital injection purposes.

Chan was handed five charges of concealing and converting his benefits from criminal conduct of around $1,572,000. Of this, some $1,291,000 was allegedly concealed in the bank account of another person, while $281,000 was converted to premium payments for insurance policies.

Teo was given one charge of providing access to her bank account to Neo, even though she had reasonable grounds to believe that this would facilitate Neo’s control of the illegally obtained money.

All four of the accused will return to court on 7 April.

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