SINGAPORE : An ex-manager at BP Singapore and the businessman who paid him S$5.88 million in bribes, each had their jail terms raised from 4½ years to six years and eight months by the High Court on Thursday (March 23).

Clarence Chang Peng Hong, 57, was also ordered to pay a penalty equivalent to the bribes he received between 2006 and 2010.

Chang, who was in charge of BP Singapore’s marine fuels business, received US$3.95 million from Koh Seng Lee, 60, the sole shareholder and executive director of marine fuel trading company Pacific Prime Trading (PPT), over 19 occasions between 2006 and 2010.

Prosecutors argued that in exchange for the bribes, Chang used his position in BP to advance Koh’s business interest by appointing PPT as BP’s trading counterparty and giving it business.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Jiang Ke-Yue said Chang instructed his subordinates to allocate the contracts with good pricing to PPT first. Chang also overlooked the fact that PPT did not have the required licence to deliver oil directly to vessels, and leaked confidential information to Koh.

PPT became BP Singapore’s largest counterparty for delivered sales by volume between January 2008 and July 2010, he said.

Chang and Koh were convicted in 2020 of 20 corruption charges by a district judge after a nearly two-year trial.

Chang, represented by Melanie Ho, and Koh, represented by Senior Counsel Lee Eng Beng, appealed against their convictions and sentences.

In January, Justice Vincent Hoong acquitted the pair of one charge pertaining to a sum of S$500,000 Koh paid to the MindChamps pre-school at City Square, where Chang’s wife was a director.

The judge found that the payments were not part of the corrupt scheme. He noted that Koh was a shareholder and director of the pre-school and that text messages between Chang and Koh were consistent with their claim that they had genuinely invested in a legitimate business.

On Thursday, he allowed the prosecution’s appeal for a higher sentence.

Justice Hoong accepted defence arguments that there was no actual monetary loss to BP, but said there was evidence of some degree of detriment caused by the cultivation of the insider relationship between Koh and Chang, and the influence that Chang had within BP.

Even though PPT did not have a bunker supply licence from the Maritime Port Authority, it was not disqualified as a trading counterparty, unlike other companies which lacked the licences.

“These selective barriers show that BP Singapore would have been deprived of the potential to have considered alternative trading counterparties, since a narrower range of alternatives was considered because of Chang’s preferential treatment,” he said.

The judge also considered that the offences involved a strategic industry and that such offences would have undermined public confidence in the integrity of the bunkering industry.

  - ANN