SINGAPORE: A 68-year-old Indian national in Singapore has been jailed for seven months after he admitted to cheating another company for almost seven years into paying inflated prices amounting to over 2.5 Cr to his freight-forwarding services firm in the city-state.
Eldo Thottungal Mathai, director of Indus Global Line (IGL) and a permanent resident of Singapore, pleaded guilty to three counts of cheating on Tuesday.
Three similar counts were considered during sentencing, reported The Straits Times.
In June 2010, Eldo got to know Hussain Naina Mohamed, a 47-year-old Indian national who worked at Utracon Structural Systems.
As an assistant shipping manager, Hussain's responsibilities included making vendor recommendations to his superiors and helping the firm's sister company, Utracon Overseas, with similar tasks. Collectively, the two firms are part of Utracon Corporation.
Unbeknownst to Utracon, Hussain was also a partner at another company, Al Rahman Enterprises & Trading (Aret).
In 2011, Eldo and Hussain hatched a plan for IGL to submit inflated quotations to Utracon for freight-forwarding services.
Eldo would first send an e-mail with a legitimate quotation to Hussain's Aret e-mail account. The latter would then respond with instructions on the mark-up amount. Subsequently, Eldo would send the marked-up quotation to Hussain at his Utracon work e-mail address. Hussain would then review it in his capacity as the company's assistant shipping manager.
In the three charges that proceeded against Eldo, Utracon was cheated into paying IGL inflated amounts of around Singaporean dollars 374,529. The total mark-ups for these quotations were Singaporean dollars 33,231.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jonathan Tan said all the marked-up amounts went to Aret.
After IGL received payment from Utracon, Eldo would pass Hussain the mark-ups in cash.
"While the accused did not receive the mark-ups, he profited from the business that IGL received by the deception that he and Hussain applied on Utracon," The Straits Times quoted Tan as saying.
Had Utracon known the truth about the pair's arrangement, and the conflict of interest on Hussain's part as both Utracon and Aret employed him, it would not have made payments to IGL, said the prosecutor.
In total, Utracon was duped into paying about SGD 417,367 (Rs 2,57,16,626) to IGL.
DPP Tan called for Eldo to be jailed for six to eight months, citing the need for deterrence and the significant difficulty in detecting the offences.
Including the offences involving Eldo, Hussain had duped Utracon into making payments totalling over SGD 5.1 million (approx Rs 31.5 Cr) to companies linked to him.
Hussain was sentenced to 30 months in jail in May after he pleaded guilty to nine counts of cheating involving more than SGD 2.5 million (approx Rs 15.5 Cr) and one count of moving a portion of his ill-gotten gains out of Singapore.
